On Sun, Nov 26, 2006 at 04:16:12PM -0600, Jim Nasby wrote:
> On Nov 23, 2006, at 12:05 PM, David Fetter wrote:
> >On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 01:33:21PM -0500, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >>I wondered if we could improve on that situation by using partial
> >>unique indexes on the consolidated table, and providing a mechanism
> >>to specify which index the FK must refer to (or else allow allow an
> >>optional predicate expression which would have to match the
> >>predicate expression of the partial index).
> >
> >Isn't this just putting some lipstick on the EAV pig?
>
> EAV?
"Entity-Attribute-Value" a frequently-repeated mistake a.k.a. an
"anti-pattern." It's something people do when they fear making design
decisions, so they defer making a decision until later by making no
decision up front. The costs in terms of performance, maintainability
and extensibility grow exponentially over time, but as is frequently
the case with such growth, they start piling up slowly at first.
Cheers,
D
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Skype: davidfetter
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