|
It may be tempting to combine unique data elements into one
field, like storing a person's full name or full address in a single field or
using the same field to store both the names of individuals and organizations.
This, however, can lead to big problems when you want to use the data you've
captured.
Let's say you combined the entire address into a single field and now you want
to send letters to the constituents of your database, but you only want to send
letters to people within a 30 mile radius of your office. To do this, you could
create a query that returns addresses with ZIP codes that are within the 30
mile radius. But if the entire address is combined into a single field you will
first need to separate the ZIP code from the rest of the address. Parsing data
like this typically requires a procedure such as a VB function or a SQL stored
procedure Since different people enter data differently there will
usually be cases where the procedure returns the wrong field.
On the other hand, if you store individual data elements in
separate fields within your database table, you will be able to perform searches of
the values in specific fields and you can always concantinate the individual field
values together to create fields like full names and full addresses.
So, to make your data more accessible and to prevent ever
having to go through the challenges of parsing a single field into two or more
separate fields, always store only one data element per field.
|