The Article is interesting, but to be honest I am against Generic Lookup Tables ... I don't think it is good database design at all.

Here is an article that describes my point of view on Generic Lookup Tables written by Don Peterson back in 2004:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/dpeterson/lookuptablemadness.asp

"1.We can store integer values to most of the data and have the description stored in the "GenericLookUp" table. As we know that performance is always going to be better when we deal with numeric columns than non numeric columns."

You can store integer Values as keys for the 'reference tables'

2.Easy maintainabilty. Lets say we have 20 LookUp tables in a application. With this "GenericLookUp" table, we just need 3 stored pros(Insert/Update/Delete) to maintain the data.

What about Integrity? I find it easier to maintain 20 well specified tables than 1 generic table.

3.Centralized information in one place. This table would be almost like a data dictionary.

MUCK tables do not agree with Normalization. And where do you stop? You might just as well put everything in one big generic table, (irony): it would save having to do joins ...

nano