In the conclusion, the author mentions the number of db objects required to support auditing in the two latter methods (900 and 450, respectively for a 150-table db). The implication...

Nice, Ravi!

I agree -- I don't like to query the sytem tables directly unless absolutely necessary. This is a slick solution -- obviously it didn't occur to me to check...

Since this board's quote feature only shows the first part of the post, here's the part I'm addressing:

"But anyway, if we declare the PK as (strDescription, strCategory), we're using the...

I'm pretty close to agreeing with you...

If we accept NULL as a "value" that has some kind of meaning, or that we can at least "deal with", and we assume...

OK-- back on topic...

I've reviewed some of Date's recent writings on 1NF and have concluded that the table from the article in fact does violate 1NF, but not for the...

Ya... my arms got a little sore from all the surfing over the weekend, and I got a bit of a tan line from my snorkel mask on Sunday. But...

I have the book, but I haven't had a chance to crack it open yet -- too busy setting up the Wai'ale'ale remote office.

Correct - that's why I asked about the Codd 1NF paraphrase. Either Greg is misremembering, or DataModel.org has got something wrong.

As Greg said, I think that the majority of us...

Is the quote from your side note an actual quote by Codd, or are you paraphrasing? I'm genuinely curious as I haven't yet read his original paper on Relational in...

I would call such a column one that is defined over an "interstingly" designed domain (data type). It would be possible for it to be correct, but unlikely.

Regarding the...

Although I agree that the design proposed in the article should be avoided, I'm a little confused by all the comments on normalization, especially this one.

In what way does the...

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that as db practicioners, we need to be sure our own house is clean before we go pointing fingers at...

Expanding on Dennis's comments a little:

<from the editorial> "...but I can't always stop Joe in accounting from entering $350,000 instead of $3500..."

Presumably, there are some business rules that dictate reasonable...

Excellent article, Michael.

There are a couple of other trade-offs to consider when deciding whether to use COALESCE() or ISNULL(). I'll leave it to you to decide which are the pro's and...

talltop;

The sql-server-performance.com article is out-of-date with respect to the later service packs. I think it was SP3 (2?) where the optimizer was changed so that these two constructs compile to...