[Tagging] indirect id's Re: football or soccer ?

[Bill Ricker]

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 8:08 AM, John F. Eldredge <john at jfeldredge.com>wrote:

> In fact, the technique of having the user select from a list of words, but
> actually storing the value as an arbitrary ID (generally numeric), is the
> recommended technique in database design.  It is called "normalizing the
> database".  Having the linking value be an ID value means that, should you
> want to change the verbal description of the value, for example from soccer
> to association_football, you only have to change the value once, in the
> lookup table, rather than changing it in thousands of places.
>

+1

Not only does this insulate from change and allow alternate terms to map to
thzsame code, but also supports internationalization.

-- 
Bill
n1vux at arrl.net bill.n1vux at gmail.com
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