What about containing customer contacts?

I still that one Customer_Contact table that contains something like Customer_ID, Contact_Type, Contact_Code columns (Entity-Attribute-Value ???) is better than seperate Customer_Phone, Customer_Fax, Customer_Email, Customer_Tweet, ad...

The Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus links a database of 145,000 words

http://www.visualthesaurus.com/

It would be interesting to see MSDN do something similar with .NET or SQL Server Books Online.

bryce.hill (1/25/2013)

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It is painfull to make changes because you use SQL Server. It is a shite product that should never be used by a real company and not real companies...

Ross McMicken (1/25/2013)

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This is why service, application, and user accounts should not be members of the SYSADMIN or DBO role. That would help prevent mysteriously dropped objects and also narrow the list...

LOL! All of you guys who added a [Customer_Tweet] table to your database, are you going to add tables for supporting Hoots and Chirps too?

BillyJack (1/21/2013)

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I think Eric's example demonstrates the strength of an EAV design..you can add new attributes via data and not table structure.

David, I see from the responses that...

David.Poole (1/21/2013)

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@eric, it depends on what you want to do with those contact details. If it is just a block of unstructured data that you want to eyeball whenever...

Peter Schott (1/21/2013)

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For Customer Contacts, why wouldn't I make a "Contact Type" table and just normalize this? Sure it can store just about anything, but since all contacts are going...

David.Poole (1/21/2013)

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Personally I would have a PhoneContactPoint table and an EmailContactPoint table

CREATE TABLE PhoneContactPointType(

PhoneContactPointTypeID SMALLINT NOT NULL

CONSTRAINT PK_PhoneContactPointType PRIMARY KEY CUSTERED,

...

The reality is that going directly to the DBA or developer may not be the best approach for an end user to propose some new application functionality, especially if it's...

Customer contact information is an example of where an entity-attribute-value model makes sense. The design is simple, efficient, and can be easily extended to support any type of contact, wether...

When I think of "big data", I think of cutting edge analytical systems that crunch TB sized datasets to solve new problems. Things like predicting weather patterns or election results....

This is definitely an area of our industry that needs more work and research. Lots of organizations, especially government organizations are being called on to open their databases up to...