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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

EAV nightmare ....oracle

My charitable Christmas mood only goes so far. I'm looking through a spec which reads like a "database design nightmare!" theme advent calendar. Each page reveals a potential disaster more frightening than the one before. This is my favourite new year hang over inducing cocktail of entity attribute values and generic application design all wrapped up in a gloriously mal-specified mess.

Table: Parameters

id VARCHAR2(50) PRIMARY KEY --The application requesting the value
identifier NUMBER PRIMARY KEY --The name of the parameter
type CHAR(1) --‘I’, ‘S’ or ‘B’ is type of value for the parameter
string_val VARCHAR2(50) --‘Y’ or ‘N’ or NULL if BOOLEAN or the string
integer_val NUMBER -- The integer value

note: The id holds a value comprising the IP address, type of
application and the instance at that IP.

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