Hi all,

Just chasing some advise. In a new application I'm developing in EDB - I
have the following situation.

In the main table (Contracts), we have a number of lookup fields for
names, such as BUYER, SELLER, AGENT, CONSIGNEE, plus a few more.

These are a lookup to the names table - so I can do this with 1 field,
and then grab whatever information I need from  the names table (such as
contacts details, addresses, etc) for various reports.

However - on some of the reports there is a legal requirement for the
names and addresses to be entered exactly as received from the bank.
(This means for 3 separate contracts - all for the same person there may
be slight differences in the layout, punctuation, etc for a companies
name & address).

As such - the only way forward I see is to have not only a lookup field
pointing back to the name (to keep a standard for queries, etc) - but
also a CLOB field for every name as well. (Sort of a double up).

My question is: Will there be any performance issues or other concerns
if I add a whole lot of CLOB fields to the main 'contracts' table for
this purpose?

This legal requirement only affects a small percentage of the reports
(although there will be an entry for every record still), so I'm
wondering if I should have another table on a 1-1 relationship with the
contracts table for all the CLOB / free text fields, or whether it's OK
to put all these in the main contracts table?

Cheers

Adam.

Adam


I use loads of CLOB and BLOB columns on my contacts table. It will not be a problem and will in fact have benefits:

1. because there are no joins the table will remain sensitive
2. you can filter the table on these fields (can be far more efficient than sql)
3. if you delete a contact - they just go - no need for triggers or hard coded programming

Roy Lambert

Excellent... thanks Roy.

I prefer to use it in the one table for ease of use / design too - so
great to know that it's the right way to go!

Thanks again for your time and input!

Cheers

Adam.