> I am in the process of redisigning a FB DB. I read a bit about
> using a Unique Object identifier (OID's) for all sequential numbers
> used in tables like Customer numbers, invoice numbers etc.
>
> This got me thinking about converting all my businss contact into
> just one table. Currently I have Customers, Vendors, Employees,
> Billto and Shipto tables all with the same basic fields. I was
> thinking about adding them all into one big table and add
> some "boolean" fields (0/1) to identify the records type - which
> could be customer/vendor/employee etc. The same contact could belong
> to multiple categories.
>
> Then when I wanted to display a customer and billto I would do a
> self-referencing (or maybe re-entrant) query like:
>
> Select C1.ContactNum, C1.ContactName, C1.Address1, C1.Address2,
> C1.City, C1.State, C2.ContactName, C2...
> From CONTACTS C1
> Left Join CONTACTS C2 on C1.BILLTO = C2.ContactNum
>
> This business has quite a few customers who are also vendors and
> might occasionally sell to an employee so there is some overlap in
> categories.
>
> Does anyone has some opinions about if this is a viable option for
> design?
>
> Rick

if the single table gets very large and you are selecting all the time by
WHERE BOOLEANFIELD=1
then I would imagine the system suffering some performance issues.
Alan