Sounds like they might be the traditional 'lookup tables': states, provinces, statuses, colors, valid_sizes, etc. Not uncommon in a real application to have several hundred of these as a way of both enforcing the constraint and providing a dynamic list of values to be presented to the user. When you consider that commercial applications these days easily run into the 1,000s of tables and have 10s-100s or thousands of columns, and need the flexibility of customer-defined LOVs, these hundreds of code tables are pretty much normal. The Value Attribute Table (one official name) that attempts to merge the code tables into one is a common variant that nearly every mature architect I know has tried, and abandoned after reality, maintenance and politics set in. /Hans On 28/01/2013 6:57 AM, John Hurley wrote: > I guess my first question is do you know "why you have about one hundred > tables > like this ..." in the current database? > > Do they represent different entities in some fashion that correspond to some > part of the real world? > > Do these tables ONLY have the two columns code and description or is there all > sorts of other columns in ( some/all ) of them? > > Do you have any understanding of the history of how and why the current set of > tables were ( pick one ) created/designed/arrived in your database? > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: Jose Soares <jose.soares@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > Sent: Mon, January 28, 2013 4:03:16 AM > Subject: Database Design Best Practice help > > Hi all, > > I have a question about database design best pratice. > > In my db I have about one hundred tables like this: > > code > description > > To avoid to have a so great number of similar tables in the db > I wonder if it is a good idea to unify all these tables in one big table > like this: > > id > code > table_ name > description > > The advantages are: > > 1. only one table in the db instead of 100 > 2. only one controller to manage the table > > Could this be a way to enhance db performance? > Is there any negative point that I don't see? > > Thanks for any comments. > > j > > > > > > > > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > -- > //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l > > > -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l