Stupid Database Tricks

I try not to pick on other peoples database designs, even when I am tortured by their unusual design. For this database, I will make an exception...

Here is a post from the Daily WTF Web site. The designer of this database, rather than using actual dates in all their tables, used a DateID that pointed to a date in a seperate table for all dates. Note that the problem involved was that the date table had not been updated (the date table needed to contain a date in order for it to be used).

In case the problem is not clear to you, using real dates in the database, and then having a table of special dates if need be, is a much more logical way to use dates. Of course, even here, you need to make some sort of arrangements for new dates to be added.

Posted by Douglas Reilly at 04:22 PM  Permalink