Legitimate Uses of the Antipattern
In some cases, an attribute may have a fixed number of choices, and the position or order of these choices may be significant. For example, a given bug may be associated with several users’ accounts, but the nature of each association is unique. One is the user who reported the bug, another is a programmer assigned to fix the bug, and another is the quality control engineer assigned to verify the fix. Even though the values in each of these columns are compatible, their significance and usage actually makes them logically different attributes.
It would be valid to define three ordinary columns in the Bugs table to store each of these three attributes. The drawbacks described in this chapter aren’t as important, ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access