I started to forward this to a colleague who is just starting to design databases. After reading it thoroughly I thought better of it. I think the author has just started designing databases himself.

Why in an article about designing a database would you confuse it by saying it's ok to denormalize columns if the application is going to take care of it.

I question the value of technique "Usually a still better solution (better by far) is to introduce a new table OfficeFax that has a name column and a FaxNumber column". What?!?! You would create a PhoneTypes table listing the types of phone numbers you're going to store with a primary key and a description of each. Then create a PhoneNumbers table with a number column and a couple foreign keys relating it to the original information table and the PhoneTypes table. This creates a many to many relationship saying for a given phone type you can have many people that have them and many people may have a given phone types.

Overall a very poor article to give to a db newbee so I won't be doing that.