Normalization

[JM]

I am building a new db and am battling with the following: Should I use one
table named tblPersons or two separate tables such as tblEmployees and
tblFamilyMembers. The former, I believe, would be a higher normal form,
however, the latter may be more intuitive when developing, coding, etc. Any
thoughts?

Regards,

JM

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

As usual, the answer is "it depends".

If the attributes in which you're interested for both are essentially the
same, then a single Persons table makes sense. If not, then having to
separate entities may make more sense.

From a programming perspective, if you have a single table, but it makes
more sense to have the separate ones, you can always have queries that
return only the Employees, or only the Family Members, and use the queries
wherever you would otherwise have used the table.

 

[Bruce Rusk]

Could one person be both at the same time? If so, would you want to change
the information in two tables or one when it changes?

 

[peregenem]

Should I use one
table named tblPersons or two separate tables such as tblEmployees and
tblFamilyMembers.

I think you should use a Persons table to hold the common attributes
AND separate tables such as Employees, Families, etc. Do a Google
serach on 'subclassing'.