Member Avatar for bridget

Hi,
I am new to db admin and would appreciate some help with a design issue.
We currently have 3 applications all with their own DB which all contain a product table. It is different in all 3 DB's and I need to replace all 3 with one enterprise wise table. This table has around 300 fields in it which when analysed fall into about 8 logical groups. Would it be better design practice to break this table up into 8 smaller tables with the product code as the key in each?

Like I said, I am very new to this and want to do it right.

Thanks for any help.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by suRoot
Member Avatar for campkev

on the surface, three hundred fields sounds like a lot, but it depends on the data involved, Does every product have one and only one entry in every column? if so, then your table is fine. if not you need to break it down.
if you are merging 3 different databases, i'm betting that there will be some fields that are exclusively going to be used by certain product types, those need to be in different tables.
You might want to get a intro to database design book as well.

Member Avatar for suRoot

erm.. Norminalisation??

there should probably be 1 database with a number of tables in it,
erm are there any replicacted entries or empty entries? if so please normalise the database before you do any front end stuff otherwise you'll get half way through the front end a find out it's either impossible or some queries will be VERY code intensive.

do you have any ERDs you can show us?

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