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RE: To Normalize or Not to Normalize

• To: "'Bullard, Claude L \(Len\)'" <len.bullard@i...>,"'XML Developers List'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: To Normalize or Not to Normalize
• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 09:59:12 -0000
• In-reply-to: <15725CF6AFE2F34DB8A5B4770B7334EE0BB1FCC4@h...>
• Thread-index: AcYAJhqAhvCk9T60RIOJ/FFV0kBO7gAbZDrw

> 
> Here's a fun question that pits theory against experience. 

That's your idea of fun?
> 
> You get a job to create a new generation of an old relational 
> database system.  Upon reading the as-is schema, you discover 
> some amount of denormalization and gnomic names.  Do you:

When a system needs significant enhancement, which seems to be the case
here, my preferred strategy is always to make the new system(*) look as much
as possible like the system that I would design if I were starting from
scratch.

(*)or at any rate, those subsystems that need to be changed

Sometimes that's not possible, usually because the system is too fragile to
change or because it's impossible to nail down all its interfaces to other
systems. That situation is no fun at all: the preferred strategy is to find
another project...

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

• References:
  • To Normalize or Not to Normalize
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>

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