Re: What do you do with an ENORMOUS primary key?

"Howard J. Rogers" <dba_at_hjrdba.com> wrote in message news:<aetihu$iir$1_at_lust.ihug.co.nz>...
> "Connor McDonald" <connor_mcdonald_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:3D124C71.2229_at_yahoo.com...
> > Howard J. Rogers wrote:
> > >
> > > Suppose I have a table as follows:
> > >
> > > Create table STANDARDS (
> > > asstcode varchar2(3),
> > > jobcode number(5,0),
> > > season varchar2(3),
> > > period number (2,0),
> > > week number (2,0),
> > > day varchar2(3))
> > >
> > > In other words, an asset can have all sorts of jobs performed to it, and
> > > those jobs can be scheduled to occur 'sometime in Spring', or 'sometime
> in
> > > March', or sometime in week 16, or on Thursday.
> > >
> > > The scheduling options are mostly mutually exclusive: if you say
> 'sometime
> > > in Spring', you can't then say you want it done in Week 16. Either you
> are
> > > vague, or you are specific.
> > >
> > > The exception is the week/day combination. You might want a job
> performed
> > > each Tuesday and Thursday of week 16, so using both the week and the day
> > > columns is permitted.
> > >
> > > My trouble is that since an assett can have many jobs scheduled for it,
> and
> > > each job can be scheduled many times, the entire table is the entire
> primary
> > > key.... and that doesn't feel right to me. I've actually created this
> table
> > > as 'ORGANIZATION INDEX', so if it *is* right, I can cope as best as
> > > possible.
> > >
> > > But are there any other suggestions? (And feel free to criticise the
> > > design/understanding of the relational model and so forth. I first
> created
> > > this table about 12 years ago. I've not seen an easier or more
> appropriate
> > > way of doing it before now, but one can always learn).
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > HJR
> >
> > Having seen the responses reminds me of the old mantra
> >
> > "The degree of normalisation in a database is inversely proportional to
> > the degree of normalisation of the DBA in charge of it"
> >
>
>
> I don't know whether to be proud or offended!!!!!!
>
> (Tell me which!)

I would guess that he is telling you that your approach to the problem is very normal, but you could simplify the normalize the problem (in a mathematical sense) and simplify it significantly.

Mathematics often seems to be orthogonal to the world. Received on Fri Jun 21 2002 - 05:12:40 CDT