John ---

I don't have the specific article handy but I had a similar situation with a huge Oracle database not too long ago:

The thing is to identify common child attrbutes to each domain. For example, address_line_1, city, state, et al. These child attrbutes should be put into their own table. Furthermore, in this table, place columns for a foreign key and a foreign key source.

If your parents are "individual" and "organization", then in the child attributes table use the primary key applicable to a given row in one of the two parents as the foreign key entry and a code like IND or ORG to indicate source. Also, in case of multiple addresses or the like for a given parent, each child attrbute row should have it's own unique, primary key.

>I'm looking for an article about a standard data design for organization and individual names and contact information (phone numbers, addresses, etc.). I have the Marcus Egger "An Introduction to Database Design Patterns" in the February 1998 Fox Talk, but I don't think that's the one I'm looking for.
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>I believe it was published in the last six or eight months, and I think it was in Fox Talk.
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>I’ve searched my file of Fox Talk's, the web sites for Pinnacle and Advisor Publications, and still can't find it.
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>If anyone that can point me to the article, I would very much appreciate it.
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>John Scobey