Not sure what a traditional model would be when it comes to contacts. Seems to me that a table linking the contact info to a person/entity, a contact type, and the value (with maybe a listed/unlisted value as well) was a better design than one column per contact type or multiple tables for phone, email, fax, etc. The worst designs I've seen were those that had just a handful of columns in the model for storing these values - they just don't extend well. I never really considered this an EAV model because it still only stores communication-type values. We're not mixing in addresses, favorite colors, and such in the same table. I guess I'm just missing the point in this particular instance, though. 🙂