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copied!<p>I'm going to be honest - I stopped when I read...</p> <blockquote> <p>I have used enumerations everywhere I would normally use a foreign key to a separate table--Artist name, Label name, and several others.</p> </blockquote> <p>If I understand correctly, that means there is an enumeration of all artists. But that enumeration of artists is definitely going to be a point of variation: there will be more artists. I sincerely doubt the record label never plans on increasing or changing the list of artists ;)</p> <p>As such, in my opinion, that is an incorrect use of an enumeration.</p> <p>I also don't think it's appropriate to perform an <code>ALTER TABLE</code> for what is inevitably a rather mundane use case. (Create/Read/Update/Destroy artist) I have no numbers to back up that opinion.</p> <p>You have to look at it as a question of what information is an entity or an attribute of an entity: for a record label, artists are entities, but media types may not be. Artists have lots of information associated with them (name, genre, awards, web site url, seniority...) which suggests they are an entity, not an attribute of another entity such as Release. Also, Artists are Created/Read/Updated and Destroyed as part of regular everyday use of he system, further suggesting they are entities.</p> <p>Entities tend to get their own table. Now, when you look at the Media Type of these Releases, you have to ask yourself whether Media Type has any other information... if it's anything more than Name you have a new Entity. For example, if your system has to keep track of whether a media type is obsolete, now there are 2 attributes for Media Type (name, is obsolete) and it should be a separate entity. If the Medai Types only have a Name within the scope of what you're building, then it's an attribute of another entity and should only be a column, not a table. At that point I would consider using an enumeration.</p>

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