JimTheWhip (6/30/2011)
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.
QFT
I was a bit astounded that we'd name the phone numbers table anything other than phone numbers and then add a types table myself. Querying it to bring back a flat record for some form of processing can be a bit of a pain, but it's that or a series of columns for phone numbers and no flexibility for when we start putting more than home, business, fax, cell phone numbers on a record.