May 10, 2007 at 4:46 am
Folks,
I have been tasked with consolidating several product databases into one. Each database has a customers table which also includes the details of the product(account) the customer has.
the company is a broadband provider and its products are Wireless,DSL and Satellite among others. These products have very different field structures.
Im going to refactor out the customer data to its own table, but should I keep a different table for each product class in the new database, seeing as how their structures are so different, or should I have one product table which includes the product fields which are similar among products and then normalise out the diffences into other tables
Therefore to bring back data for a customer with a wireless account..
customer-->product_details-->wireless_details
satellite..
customer-->product_details-->satellite_details
Sorry if this is a bit vague.
Thanks
Mick
May 18, 2007 at 12:44 am
my instinct is to have all products in the same table. Either that, or create a view that brings them all together. Otherwise you'll continually be writing unmaintainable queries that hit all 3 tables.
and what if someone comes up with a new product? does that mean a new table? yuck!
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elsasoft.org
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