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

Hi Drew

> And when your database design is used in another country, with different
> rules.......hmmmmmm.....who keeps bringing up internationalization issues?
> LOL

That could be me. That's why I included the word "domestic". For other
cases I would do differently.

/gustav


>> I keep asking (and nobody is responding) - whose data is it?  Whose database
>> is it.

> In most cases, the client's.

>> Who are YOU to TELL the client that 53 characters is all they need?

> I'm the expert. Quite often the client doesn't know what he/she needs.
> If there would be a good reason to limit a text field to 53 chars, I
> would tell or simply apply it.
> As some examples, ISO country codes are either two or three chars, BIC
> (SWIFT) codes are 8 or 11 chars, and IBAN codes are, by definition,
> max. 34 chars - anything above these numbers would represent an error
> and would make no sense to store.

> Here, no city name is longer than 20 chars and no street name is
> longer than 34 chars. Thus 50 is a reasonable limit for domestic 
> address lines which, by the way, is also what Access's table designer
> suggests.