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  • regarding the edit: you are totally trying to sneak a whole entity table into another entity table. Just because the lookup table is small does not make it any less of an entity. Further, your suggestion that people can 'choose the rows to use' is completely garbage. Foreign key constraints exist specifically for that purpose - use them. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 15:06
  • @Telastyn I think the "Choose the rows to use" sentence was just a bad formulation on my part. I fully intend to use foreign key constraints. My point was that the users will not be able to add new rows to the LiteraryTypeTable from anywhere in the interface, or to type in free text for the Type field of the LiteraryWork table, so that I won't end up with a "Fairytale" entry as well as a "Fairy tale" entry. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 15:21
  • @RumiP. use strings in the main table then. If your DB is small enough that storage and string processing is not a problem then you're OK. Don't try this on big databases though. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 15:33
  • @gbn Actually, I haven't yet decided which version to use. I asked this question exactly because I wanted to hear all drawbacks before committing myself to an option. I have seen examples of using meaningful strings as IDs in textbooks and lecture notes which do teach normalization too, so I was just surprised to hear that it is considered non-normalized, that's why I tried to get more info from the people who said this. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 15:51
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    There are a couple of questions at dba.stackexchange that address this exact question: dba.stackexchange.com/q/1910/13333 and dba.stackexchange.com/q/232/13333 Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 15:52