Quote:
Originally posted by greengaint
Thanks, I knew it was going to be ugly, i agree that this data model in some ways really sucks... ohh well off to make this work.. Thanks again
|
Everyone "invents" this data model at some point early in their database careers; well, I'm sure I did once anyway. "Hey, look! With this model we don't have to alter tables or application code ever again! The users can just define their own 'fields' whenever they like!" Then later you find that:
(a) performance sucks very badly, and
(b) you need to write SQL 17 pages long to produce the simplest report, and
(c) the data is full of nonsense like beds='4.2' and city = ' kignsley' and startdate = '31 Feb 2004'... and
(d) nobody likes this system any more