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SQL Antipatterns
book

SQL Antipatterns

by Bill Karwin
June 2010
Intermediate to advanced
328 pages
7h 51m
English
Pragmatic Bookshelf
Content preview from SQL Antipatterns

Antipattern: Create Multiple Columns

We still have to account for multiple values in the attribute, but we know the new solution must store only a single value in each column. It might seem natural to create multiple columns in this table, each containing a single tag.

Multi-Column/anti/create-table.sql
 
CREATE​ ​TABLE​ Bugs (
 
bug_id SERIAL ​PRIMARY​ ​KEY​,
 
description ​VARCHAR​(1000),
 
tag1 ​VARCHAR​(20),
 
tag2 ​VARCHAR​(20),
 
tag3 ​VARCHAR​(20)
 
);

As you assign tags to a given bug, you’d put values in one of these three columns. Unused columns remain null.

Multi-Column/anti/update.sql
 
UPDATE​ Bugs ​SET​ tag2 = ​'performance'​ ​WHERE​ bug_id = 3456;

bug_id

description

tag1

tag2

tag3

1234

Crashes while saving

crash

NULL

NULL

3456

Increase performance ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781680500073Errata Page