Rick,
i'm sorry, but this is the most primitive approach to do db design.
You can also check any db design books if you don't believe me,
its name is 1. normal form of 5 in the literature.
Try to create a very well hiyerarcy with your data depends on best
relations. Never forget the mean of RDBMS.
If you really believe you can do all with only one table, then use a
normal random access RAW file it will be faster then SQL.
Structer here is not about only record structer, also means more.

good lucks, ;)

Ali

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Roen" <rick@s...>
wrote:

> 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