Nick - I very much agree with Don Peterson's comment - a very good article except for the suggestion to consolidate lookup tables. Don's article, for which he provides a link, give an excellent summary of the issue and provides good reasons for *not* going the route of consolidating lookup tables.

It's not that lookup tables complicate a database - it's that life and business processes can in fact be complicated, and accurately representing the facts and the relationships between them properly leads to a lot of "little tables."

That one criticism notwithstanding, I liked your article and your writing style.

Best regards,

SteveR