[AccessD] Re: On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various

John and all,

I have been reading this and wow, you guys need to snip out the old so we 
do not have these massive emails with everything in them.

John, there is only one point that I would have to disagree with you 
on.  That is if you defined a table that COULD hold more that the bytes 
allowed per record.  That would be a no-no.  And, before you go there, I 
had one of the SIG members from my developer's SIG do just that.  We ended 
up splitting it up into 3 tables with 1-to-1 relationships.

Robert

At 01:45 PM 5/25/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 14:29:20 -0400
>From: "John W. Colby" <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
>Subject: RE: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various
>To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving"
>         <accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
>Message-ID: <DCEFJAOENMNENLAAOFGPCEPPFKAA.jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> >But you are arbitrarily limiting them. In this case to 255.
>
>Not true, arbitrary implies flipping a coin and taking whatever comes down.
>I am in no way doing that.  I am making an informed choice between two data
>types.  Memos have many problems that I don't want to deal with if I don't
>have to.  If I had the choice of using a 4K text field I would (probably).
>
>Here is the (original) argument (as I read it)
>
>"I want to be able to display all of the data that the user is able to
>enter.  So if I can only display 20 characters I limit the user to 20
>characters."
>
>Now tell me, is that a valid reason to set a limit to a field size?  Not in
>my book.  If he can only display 10 characters for the last name he sets the
>text field to 10?  If only 5 then he sets it to 5?  Whose data is this
>anyway?
>
>This whole argument is simply silly.  You are choosing some number, out of
>thin air, no validation testing, no mathematical proof that the size you are
>setting is 99.9% of all the instances the user wishes to enter.  Just a
>number, grabbed out of thin air, that is what YOU decide the data should fit
>in.  Flip a coin, pull a number out of a hat, spin a roulette wheel.
>
>I am making a decision between 2 choices, a data type of 255 characters or a
>data type of 32K.  I then look at the expected data and if there is a
>reasonable use for the memo I use it.
>
>Your choices are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,...255 characters.  But there is no
>specific reason for 2 instead of 3, or 4 instead of 6, just "what you think
>"should" work".
>
>Pick one at random (and attempt to validate your reasons so that you are
>comfortable) then run around expanding the number when it is not a good
>choice.
>
>I personally don't care if you do that but to tell me that I am using bad
>programming practices because I don't make such capricious and arbitrary
>decisions is a bit of an insult wouldn't you say?
>
>And FINALLY, notice that you are studiously avoiding any talk of business
>analysis.  I have stated over and over that if there is a BUSINESS reason
>for limiting a field length then I would do so.  "My address fields are
>limited to 25 characters" is NOT a business rule.  "I limit the field to the
>size I can display" is CERTAINLY not a business rule.
>
>John W. Colby