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RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

mcloney — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 14:20:00 GMT

What about DTS packages? I've had developers add columns and forget to tell me, then they wonder why things aren't working correctly when we push to production. Maddening.

Cheers,

-m

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

DCPeterson — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 10:53:00 GMT

How about "Does the column make sense logically?" i.e. will the column take my BCNF table(s) and turn them into an unnormalized mess of redundancy and inconsistency?

This, of course, assumes that the database was designed properly in the first place.

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

David.Poole — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 08:53:00 GMT

sp_refreshview recompiles the view which achieves the same thing as running an ALTER statement

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

williamhoos@yahoo.com — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 08:48:00 GMT

I end up scripting just the CREATE component of all views, pocs, functions and then replacint CREATE with ALTER and runing the script in QA to incorporate all column references because it seems like the columns in a view are stored as a positional reference to the column order in the related table, rather than to a table_name.field_name reference. Does the sp_refreshviews do the same thing?

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

noeld — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 06:25:00 GMT

VERY NICE !

I wish my boss would read it every time I am asked to add one and "it shouldn't take me more than a couple of seconds" comes after that

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

David.Poole — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 02:27:00 GMT

How about checking to see if the new column is actually needed?

Look at the design of what is there already and ask if it can encompass the need without the adding the extra column.

A good example of this is the need to add BIT columns. As you can't index them anyway you may as well have a generic Flags field as an integer and use a bit pattern. This way your existing design allows for additional flags (bits) at a later date.

I'm just auditing an external application and it appears that there are at least 4 ways of marking a record as being restricted from public viewing.

It looks like the database was built by 4 natural antagonists with a dislike for computers.

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

broesi — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:20:00 GMT

Great article! This handy checklist will save me a lot of time - thanks!

RE: Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

jordanac — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 23:32:00 GMT

Adding a column in a hurry without doing checks!

Been there! Done that! and will NEVER DO IT AGAIN! It can cause total destruction and cost you more time in the end.

Worst Practice - Adding a Column Without Thinking!

Andy Warren — Sun, 15 Feb 2004 06:51:00 GMT

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