Normalisation for Numby's (1 Viewer)

HillTJ

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Members, I have a drama & am in need of assistance. Some 18months ago I adapted my CRM program & turned it into a quoting system for my boss. Despite the fact that I did not really complete the project in my eyes, my boss has been using it exclusively since & I mean 8 hrs/day everyday, so I guess its been successful. I am surprised (relieved) that he's had no major crash since I told him that he cannot run split FE/BE via wifi!!. Anyway, now he is criticizing my carefully normalised database & saying that it contained too many tables & should be consolidated into fewer, but larger tables! He wishes to extract data into Project BI & sees lots of tables as a problem. This is totally stupid to me and fly's against all relational database logic. He is very pig headed about this as he "knows" better than me. I'm going to also get pig headed & refuse his request because it's dumb. He is not a reader nor studier otherwise he could simply Google this matter to find "Best Practice" design techniques. I'm keen to hear from any forum member who's experienced similar (or is it just me) & also how they handled this.
 

HillTJ

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arnelgp, No doubt about that. Ever encountered this logic before?
 

Sun_Force

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I'm going to also get pig headed & refuse his request because it's dumb.
If he pays, he has the right to be wrong and ask for whatever he wants, even if it's not correct.
If you're his employee, you can talk to him about the logic, but at the end of the day, it's him who decides. You can not refuse.

Just thinking loudly....
 
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The_Doc_Man

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@HillTJ - you can TRY this approach. By subdividing the tables to finer granularity, you capture information about how the data sets are related to each other, which you would lose when you merged tables. Point out that the database isn't only about data but how all of it fits together. And show him not only the tables, but the relationship diagrams. (I'm assuming that with fine-grained tables, you have lots of lookups and joins that exploit the relationships...)
 

HillTJ

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Gents, thanks. I'll have a think about whether I broach the matter or ask him to show me how he wants the tables. The_Doc_Man, There are stacks of lookups, relationships and all the other good stuff that goes without saying for a relational database.
 

Uncle Gizmo

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There are stacks of lookups

It is possible to put all of the lookups into a single table. I do this a lot, and I understand that that Pat does something similar.
 

Isaac

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Members, I have a drama & am in need of assistance. Some 18months ago I adapted my CRM program & turned it into a quoting system for my boss. Despite the fact that I did not really complete the project in my eyes, my boss has been using it exclusively since & I mean 8 hrs/day everyday, so I guess its been successful. I am surprised (relieved) that he's had no major crash since I told him that he cannot run split FE/BE via wifi!!. Anyway, now he is criticizing my carefully normalised database & saying that it contained too many tables & should be consolidated into fewer, but larger tables! He wishes to extract data into Project BI & sees lots of tables as a problem. This is totally stupid to me and fly's against all relational database logic. He is very pig headed about this as he "knows" better than me. I'm going to also get pig headed & refuse his request because it's dumb. He is not a reader nor studier otherwise he could simply Google this matter to find "Best Practice" design techniques. I'm keen to hear from any forum member who's experienced similar (or is it just me) & also how they handled this.
Think of what would be done if you were a sql server developer and you will have your answer. They'd say never mind the tables, I'll make you a View(s) as needed. That's what you need to do now.

A truly normalized datamart or database IS in fact intimidating to a business analyst who just wants to pull some "simple" reports. So you give them their nice wide data by creating views for them
 

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