Naturally I cannot remember where I read the articles I would like to reference but I did find the following:

Academic sytle paper

Data Extraction and Ad Hoc Query of an Entity— Attribute— Value Database

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=61332

See section 11 Disccussion of drawacks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-Attribute-Value_model

See Downsides

http://www.answers.com/topic/entity-attribute-value-model?cat=technology

Article in favor of generic design with many mostly negative comments posted

http://www.sswug.org/see/26210

Posted 4 table model of everything with a few mostly negative and not overly specific disagreements

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?design.4.331499.15

The basic EV design works great when you have only one set of attributes to values, it works pretty good when you have a few sets of attributes to value pairs by a limited number of groups. By add another layer or two of grouping and increase the volume then the model starts to break down as soon as your query complexity increases.

If you are just considering using the model for a simple parameter table then you will probably not have to deal with most of the issues but if you needs are more complex you can quickly get into trouble.

-- Mark D Powell --