>Hi Erik,
>
>Your point is well taken. I think you are correct in your assumption about my data not being normalized. Allow me to explain further and you will probably recommend that I should make an attempt at normalization.
>
>I have several categories of medical information data in my record-
>Diseases
>Medications
>Disabilities
>Immunizations
>Allergies
>

THe problem with having a field for each disease, medication, etc, is that when you decide to add another disease to the list, you have to change your table structure. If this is a medical survey form, I can see how you would be inclined to put everything in one table. But the normalized picture would consist of a main table (patient?) and a few child table with foreign keys to the patient table- one for diseases, one for medications, one for disabilities, etc.

Your decision to normalize should be based on the use and ultimate destination for this data. If this data will ultimately become patient history, and will be tied to software form elements, I think you would be better off normalizing. If it is to be used for one time statistics gathering, you may be better off leaving it denormalized.

HTH.