Many tables-> bad?

Currently, I can chose two ways to implement a function:
The easy way would lead to many (300) tables.
The harder way would lead to considerable fewer tables.
Is there a reason to chose the harder way? Are there any penalties, if you
have many tables (with few entries) compared to few tables with many entries
?
Every input is welcome.Explain why implementing a function would require implementing new tables.
Do these tables store some type of meta data?
"the friendly display name"
<thefriendlydisplayname@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:99C532C3-3F4D-46F9-8F86-BF5EE6930441@.microsoft.com...
> Currently, I can chose two ways to implement a function:
> The easy way would lead to many (300) tables.
> The harder way would lead to considerable fewer tables.
> Is there a reason to chose the harder way? Are there any penalties, if you
> have many tables (with few entries) compared to few tables with many
> entries?
> Every input is welcome.|||I will attempt to answer this in haiku:
Since I cannot clearly see
What your problem is
The answer is 42
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The_Answer_to_Life,_the_Universe,_and_Ev
erything[/url
]
On a serious note, there are a lot of ways to answer this question; if
you're building a data warehouse and using attribute splitting, 300
tables in a partitioned view is a perfectly acceptable practice. 300
joins may not be.
What is the function of which you speak? Can you post more
information, and perhaps we can come up with some suggestions on how to
implement what you are trying to do.
Stu|||Are you familiar with relational design principles and the concept of
normalization? That should be your guide to the logical design.
Physical design comes after logical but since you've told us nothing
about your logical design we can't help you.
If you aren't familiar with design principles then you need to take and
course or study some books. It's much too big a topic for a newsgroup.
David Portas
SQL Server MVP
--|||If you can figure out what is an entity and what is an attribute you will
answer your own question.
"the friendly display name"
<thefriendlydisplayname@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:99C532C3-3F4D-46F9-8F86-BF5EE6930441@.microsoft.com...
> Currently, I can chose two ways to implement a function:
> The easy way would lead to many (300) tables.
> The harder way would lead to considerable fewer tables.
> Is there a reason to chose the harder way? Are there any penalties, if you
> have many tables (with few entries) compared to few tables with many
> entries?
> Every input is welcome.