4 ms·

I get what you're saying. But I think "screen_name" is used here to indicate the IM links that some sites let users put on their profile. They then create the

I get what you're saying. But I think "screen_name" is used here to indicate the IM links that some sites let users put on their profile. They then create the little ymsgr:sendIM?user_name hyperlinks so that you can IM that person. So, that IS actually something that would go on the profile page, right with the phone number. I'd always heard that normalization should only be done at sane data boundaries. IE, if you have a bunch of fields that always go together, they should be in the same table.

ars 18y ago
The thing with screen_name was just an example of how normalizing could help with speed. It wasn't meant to be definitive. Plus for the profile page you could just get the data from that other server. >I'd always heard that normalization should only be done at sane data boundaries. IE, if you have a bunch of fields that always go together, they should be in the same table. No, not exactly. It's too big of a subject to explain in a post like this, plus there is tons of text on it if you search. But, basically normalization removes duplicated data from the database. It's also used to allow multiple X to exist for a single Y without having columns like X_1, X_2, X_3, etc. And finally it's used to show relationships between things. There are some people will will simply split a table into two tables along logical boundaries (but still, just one row in each table). This is not normalization. It can be done if some data is accessed rarely, or because the database can not handle such a big table, but it's not because of normalization.