When to break from Programming Best Practices

[Memento]

Is there ever a situation where it is acceptable to store data like Goals1, Goals2, Goals3, Goals4, Goals5? I've always been taught NEVER to create fields that have numbering because you might run into a situation where you need a Goals 6,7,8,9, etc... As it is now, I create another table called Goals and link it back to whatever table needs to use it.

The reason I ask is because we are getting a new software package, and they use the above technique several times. I'm guessing they did it that way because it might make reporting easier?!?

 

[vongrunt]

> I've always been taught NEVER to create fields that have numbering because you might run into a situation where you need a Goals 6,7,8,9, etc...

Technical term for that is "repeating columns". People do that to make CRUDs (create/read/update/delete actions) easier. That works in a short run. Anything after that... .

And reporting... um. Trivial reports become nothing but vanilla SELECTs. Anything more complex than that... .

Nah, this is spreadsheet stuff At least for OLTP purposes, this causes more trouble than it's worth.

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