sql server programming: I am a newbie and trying to setup a database similar to Northwind with
Customers, Suppliers and Employees. However, unlike Northwind I want to keep
all the contact info for each one of these (Customers, Suppliers, Employees)
in the same table named Contacts ( which I hope to eventually link / sync
with Outlook). My question is should I be setting up a 1-many or a 1-1
relationship between the tables and Contacts? What are the pros/cons in
either case? If 1-1 is the answer then how do I setup a 1-1 relationship?
(e.g., Customer would have customerid and contactid.. would they both have to
be primary keys?)

Thanks
Peter

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If you want to put all contacts in one table

Pros
-------------
1. Same schema will be used for all contacts and so format is
standardized for contacts like address1 varchar(50) , email
varchchar(60) etc

2. If you want to expand the columns you can do it in one table and
easy code change .

3. You can use only one table with flag column for Customers,
Suppliers, Employees (CU,SU,EM)

4 If your customer is also supplier , you can keep only one entry

Example

Main table : Customer

CustomerID : 1001 , customername .....
SupplierID : 2001


MultiAddress -- This is a connecting table

MultiID Multicode AddressID
1001 CU 1
2001 SU 2

Address table

AddressID Adress1, Adress2 zip
1 123 goodcity
2 456 verygood city

Cons
----------

1. You are not able to enforce FK relationship from MultiAddress
table to customer/Supplier tables directly. You need to do through
triggers

2. If you don't enforce relationship through triggers , you may end
up into orphan address/wrong addresses

3. Data modification should handled and verified in your code (SP )

Srinivas