Captain Jack wrote:
> Her perspective is different, and I'm learning new things.

Yep. That was how people did it before the relational model was invented. 
(Well, with appropriate understanding that OO was invented after RDBMS.)

Learning to model data in a database well is an important skill for bigger 
systems. Otherwise, you wind up a couple years down the road with data that 
reflects what you wanted to do with the system when you started, and no way 
of getting the information you need now.

Sort of like the difference between procedural and OO programming - the 
procedural code assumes the whole ecosystem the procedure is in, while the 
OO class/data is more modular. The point of relational is to make the data 
unrelated to the actual code that uses it, but rather related to the real 
world stuff it represents. Ideally, for example, you'd have no "unique IDs" 
in your database - the only reason you do is that some real-world items have 
unique properties that you can't digitize.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   The question in today's corporate environment is not
   so much "what color is your parachute?" as it is
   "what color is your nose?"

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