/ all codes in one large table and included a "codetype" field to Well, if the data for different codetypes are not that much diverse, i.e. can possibly be fit into a single table, this is preferred (only my opinion and experience, no big theory behind). Just add a tag on the codetype field to keep it speedy. The cost is one extra tag, and having to filter out unnecessary codetype records every once in a while; the benefits seem to be: - less table open/close activity - easy retrieving records for several codetypes at once (vs opening each table in a row and, worse, knowing their names) - easy adding new codetypes (adding one allowed value into the list vs adding one more table into the project), and believe me, there will be new ones - lots of reusable objects (for fields being in common between similar codetypes) / til now thought she was the only one on the planet using this stuff ;-). Welcome to the club :)