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cDc
Starting Member
30 Posts |
 Posted - 2003-12-23 : 03:20:14
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| Hopefully quite a simple one! I have a products table and need to store a "release date" as a datetime but not for all products. Is it more efficient to add a field to my products tables and have it as a null when a product does not have a release date or split this out into another table called productReleaseDates for example and join when I need this data bearing in mind I am potentially dealing with millions of products.tia! |
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Wanderer
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
1168 Posts |
Posted - 2003-12-23 : 03:44:51
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| It sounds to me like you are expanding the definition on the Product entity to include the attribute ReleasesDate, so from a logical point of view, you would add an attribute to the entity, and ina normal coversion that would mean an extra column on the table.How often are you likely to extract release dates, and what cardinality do you expect on this column - are most products likely to have a releasedate, or are most likelty to be null ? Unless you are going to have a high percentage nulls, I would definitely go with adding the column to your table ( I hope this is not one of those 100+ column tables already!).HTH*#&#* *#&#* *#&#* *#&#* Chaos, Disorder and Panic ... my work is done here! |
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add field or create new table