Nuances of Normalisation

[Pauldohert]

Why is it common to store address fields

ie Address1, Address2, Address3, Address4, Town etc in a table, seems to me that is as un normalisaed as

having fields like description1, description2, description3 etc which we would never do and put in another table as seperate records rather than fields.

Whats the differnace that makes address more acceptable to be un normalised?

Confused as ever , Paul

 

[reclusivemonkey]

I've always used;

Address (with multiple lines, so you can have Flat 3<newline>1 Arcacia Avenue)
Postal Town (all UK addresses should have a postal town)
Postcode (easily obtained from the royal mail website)

It always puzzled me when I saw multiple address lines in databases; it would seem that its much easier done with a single multi line address field. There is no longer a need for Counties in UK addresses according to the post office. They also state that for address labels, ideally the Postal Town should be in capitals and emboldened. However this will obviously only be of use for UK addresses.

I'd post the link from the Royal Mail website, but the site is down at the moment...

 

[Pauldohert]

Thanks to both of you.

I will maybe understand your answer more Pat if I understand - "alternate addresses".

If you called address - addressdescription and colour - colourdescription (it seems to me only real world knowledge of their use differs them), I still don't get why address would be broken up into fields (I am happy its taken this far, but don't understand why it isn;t taken futher to a differnat record in another table for each line of address), whereas colour would be more likely broken up into records in another table.

Is the Access MVP award new Pat, I have not noticed it in your signature before. Well done anyhow!

 

[R. Hicks]

To add to what Pat has posted ...

If you have multiple addresses .. such as Home Address, Business Address, Shipping Address .. ect ... you should have an additional child table for these entries with a field to indentify the address type ..

RDH

 

[ScottGem]

I will maybe understand your answer more Pat if I understand - "alternate addresses".

Let me give it a shot.

An address can have multiple lines. Examples:

123 Elm St
Apt 2

345 Wall St
Suite 1234

While you can put those all on one line you wouldn't want to, So you would include multiple fields for each potential part of an address. Personally, I use one field with embedded carriage returns, unless I need to perform some analysis on the address parts. For example, I did some work for a company that did deliveries. To be able to create delivery routes we needs to sort by the street name and then house number.

 

[Pauldohert]

Thanks , I think I have a better idea now.