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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: RE: Data Modeling
Hi Again,
What I do when a model is going to change is try to make it as flexible as possible from the start. Build more abstraction into the model than you normally would. Normalization is even more important here, even going to 4th or 5th form, or at least Boyce-Codd 3rd. You want to design it so that when someone wants to change the structure, it may be facilitated by the addition of a new record instead of a new column. A very simplistic example would be to have a separate address entity allowing for the possibility of multiple addresses per customer, instead of building the address attributes right into the customer entity. A good rule of thumb: whatever will change should be changeable by addition or subtraction of a row. Whatever won't change is a candidate for a column. That's a generalization, but a good rule nonetheless.
Data Architect from Sybase, ER/Studio from Embarcadero, Erwin from Computer Associates are all good tools and easy to learn. QDesigner is the Data Architect physical modeler repackaged by Quest and sold for less. Excellent tool.
Michael
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Author: Michael Milligan
INET: Michael.Milligan_at_ingenix.com
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