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

[Peteris Krisjanis]

2010/7/1 Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>:
> 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.
>

-1

How current scheme doesn't support internationalization? How would
that solve problems we have?

In couns, with this proposal you loose readibility, you can't manage
tags manually, you have to manage huge database/table of tags and
their numbers. It gives you new problems and doesn't solve old ones.

If we talking about table normalization, it is about having definite
records and then align them with number IDs. Tags never bill be
definite (as much I would like to). And lot or "real" database guys
normalization sees as double edged sword, which sometimes are getting
in the way to get job done.

I really hate direction this conversation is going just because
someone can't take a fact that 'soccer' is term of football we all
know and love. Get over it - that's life, anyone can take any word and
claim it obscene or trash or something he/she doesn't like.

Let's better clean up and "normalize" tags, improving schemas and relations.

Cheers,
Peter.