Purist or Pragmatist

[Mike Revis]

Hi Group,

In the context of normalization. If I understand it correctly.

I have a table with ten fields. One of those fields only receives data in
about 5% of the records. I should move that field to its own table. ??

I have 6 tables with any number of fields. One or more of those fields in
any one of those tables only receives data in about 5% of the records. I
should move each of the offending fields in each table to its own table. ??

Would it be practical to make one table that contains all of the offending
fields?

As I think about it. Probably not. The sixth table isn't connected to the
first table.

pk1 -> fk1/pk2 ->fk2/pk3 -> fk3

My application is pretty small. 6 tables and about 16,000 records in 5
years.

By way of explanation. I have so many rarely populated fields because I have
tried to cover every possible senario. Even the ones that only occur once in
a year.

As always any thoughts, comments or suggestions are welcome.

Best regards,
Mike

 

[John Spencer]

In my OPINION there is really no need to move the data to a separate
field based on percentage of use. There may be other reasons to do so,
but a simple percentage of use is not a good reason.



'====================================================
John Spencer
Access MVP 2002-2005, 2007-2009
The Hilltop Institute
University of Maryland Baltimore County
'====================================================

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

You don't have enough records to really worry about it. If you had 160,000
records instead of 16,000 you might well think about a table with fields
which are rarely used, or used in a specific case. In no case do you ever
want to put multiple dissimilar data in the same table. Remember a table
describes a specific data object and a field describes data within the
table.

 

[Tony Toews [MVP]]

By way of explanation. I have so many rarely populated fields because I have
tried to cover every possible senario. Even the ones that only occur once in
a year.

That's fine. I have lots of tables with fields that are only
occasionally used. Including a memo field for whatever doesn't fit
anywhere else.

Tony

 

[Mike Revis]

Many thanks to everyone. Now I can stop stressing and get back to work.

Best regards,
Mike