=?Utf-8?B?RGVubmlz?= wrote in
:

Also, as I stated in the other discussion on this subject (which I
surprised you missed as you are commenting in that discussion
also), Iƒ Tve worked on 12 different vendorƒ Ts insurance systems
over the years. Those system have been written DECADES apart with
totally different technology and totally different development
groups

I have looked at the data structures that have become common
practice for a lot of different application types and have
repeatedly seen bad designs become the norm for those creating those
types of applications.

That many people have used the same data structure doesn't make it a
good one.

Likewise, lots of applications have to support legacy applications
that can't easily handle more normalized relational structures and
thus a lot of structures that were required 15-20 years ago by the
available technology are still in use. This is quite understandable,
of course, but if you're developing a new application using modern
technology, there's no reason to maintain the old data structures
unless they are really the best model of the entities involved.

I see this kind of thing all the time. A 200-field table is just not
a good model and for Access is way too close to the 255-field limit
for me to be comfortable with it.

While it's theoretically possible that the structure is not
denormalized, I think it's extremely unlikely, and that there are
better structures to store and manipulate the very same data.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.dfenton.com/
usenet at dfenton dot com http://www.dfenton.com/DFA/