On Dec 7, 2010, at 8:07 AM, nan wich wrote:
> Sam, I have a tendency to agree with you on the number of tables. I've kind 
> of gotten used to it, but I sued to look at the database and say, "OMG, 125 
> tables?" That's one of the drawbacks to normalizing. The idea is that it 
> allegedly ends up decreasing the count, I find that, in practice, it usually 
> does not. In the olden days, before databases (now called NoSql), one could 
> create a file with many different record layouts in it and still understand 
> what one was working with. Just think of it as DBA job security.


I'm pretty sure you have the concept of normalization and de-normalization 
backwards. There are only a few Drupal modules that I know of that focus on 
de-normalization, such as http://drupal.org/project/tracker2 and 
http://drupal.org/project/materialized_view. Otherwise, normalization almost 
always causes and increase in the number of tables. 

For more info on normalization and it's different forms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_normal_form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denormalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialized_view

-Mike
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Michael Prasuhn
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[email protected]
http://mikeyp.net


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