On 11/10/06, Dries Buytaert <dries.buytaert@gmail.com> wrote:
Having simple, specialized tables (like the one above) is anything but a bad thing, IMO.
I completely agree with this; there is a tradeoff in keeping specialized tables for high-volume tasks(e.g. taxonomy); and low-volume, high variablity tasks("related to", "books", etc). But we should not forget the latter case. For the latter case, having a new table for each of these relationships (most of which are custom ones anyway) is fairly overkill (since there will be ~10-20 tuples per table, then). The concept of relations is used for everything that's not high volume, and does not deserve a special table. Think of it as a "catchall" for all relations that are not treated specially. -Arnab
-- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/