Unless you expect to have more than one set of "additional information" per person, then you should add the new fields to your existing records. Don't worry too much about space, it doesn't sound like you will be adding that much.
I don't think that adding a new table improves normalization; in fact, I think it reduces it. It will certainly make manipulating it more of a nuisance. By the way, I hope you have a unique identifier for your table. There is more than one John Smith in the world. Regards, Jerry Schwartz The Infoshop by Global Information Incorporated 195 Farmington Ave. Farmington, CT 06032 860.674.8796 / FAX: 860.674.8341 www.the-infoshop.com www.giiexpress.com www.etudes-marche.com > -----Original Message----- > From: Afan Pasalic [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 11:42 AM > To: mysql@lists.mysql.com > Subject: do I need two tables or one will do just fine? > > hi, > I have a employees table (first name, last_name, address, city, state, > zip, phone,...). > though, I got a requested to add additional info about people, like > phone_extension, zip+4, nick, DOB... that will not be used very often. > what would be better solution: > a) add these columns to employees table > b) create separate table employees_addition_info with these fields and > store info if any (with employee_id of course) > > one friend of mine suggest me to keep all data in one table since the > "empty" fields will be NULL and there will not be a lot of wasted > space. specially because I'll never have more than 200K records (right > now I have about 50K records). and "normalization" will not improve a > lot? > > any suggestions? > > thanks. > > -afan > > -- > MySQL General Mailing List > For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql > To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > infoshop.com -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
