Meow!

[semperfiona]

From: [techie project manager]
Just because he doesn't understand our data model doesn't mean there are
data integrity problems!

From: [customer IT person]
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 8:25 AM
To: [non-techie vice president], thence forwarded to several others...

My concern is that we have two tables with the same field names and
different information in each creating a data integrity
problem.

---

Unfortunately, it doesn't mean there aren't, either. As it
happens, in this case, he found a real data problem. The fields have
different purposes, so that for some users different data is correct,
but in his case they should be the same. However, it's all old data,
created before they went live on our software. It was either screwed up
in the conversion process or it was bad before.

We get similar complaints occasionally. Last time it was a complete
misunderstanding of the tables' purpose, and all the data was valid.

Comments

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Two tables with the same field names? Happens all the time! Most tables I create have a field called IDCODE and a field called DESCR, for example. You tell them apart because they are in different tables. DEPARTMENT.IDCODE and DEPARTMENT.DESCR are very different from LOCATION.IDCODE and LOCATION.DESCR, or from JOB.IDCODE and JOB.DESCR, which are in turn different from STYLE.IDCODE and STYLE.DESCR....

I can imagine two tables with identical sets of field names, serving completely different purposes. APPL_ADDRESS has fields storing the address and contact info for job applicants. EMPLOY_ADDRESS has the very same fields, storing the address and contact info for employees. There will even be some overlap, too, as some applicants become employees.

What am I not seeing here? Because I don't see a data integrity problem...

[jilly-bear.livejournal.com]

It's the way we have the naming conventions set here - Customer number may be in several tables but it should be the same actual number in each one for the same account.

Of course there may also be several accounts that belong to the same customer number.... oh yeah, I think I'm confusing the issue! ::grin::

I understand what you mean.