[AccessD] Lookup and production tables' alternative symbolic keys...

Ho All,

When you design highly normalized databases how often do you define
alternative symbolic keys for your lookup and production tables?

If you do not define such alternative symbolic keys what is your reasoning?

FYI: I always define alternative symbolic keys for all lookup and for at
least entry production tables. By "entry production tables" I mean first
master (parent) table in master(parent)->detail->...->detail chains.

BTW, what was the longest master->detail->...->detail chain for a database
you developed?

>From my experience an average value for the length of these chains is 2.5;
if it's 3 then the third level table is usually a (many to many)
relationship table; sometimes length of chains can be even 5 but I have
never seen chains longer than five...

Do they exist?

Of course classification tables' chains could be very long but I consider
them as an exception, which supports the "rules/hypothesis" mentioned above.
And as far as I see from most of the real life samples when classification
is used then master->detail->...detail chain is rarely longer than 3. And if
it's longer then recursive structures are usually used...

Please write about your opinion/experience on subject and related issues.

Thank you.

--
Shamil