Re: Normalized Tables & SELECT [was: Find "smallest common year"]

>
>
>> - one table for the years names/ids/etc. (1970, 1; 1971, 2;
>> 1973, 3;
>> ....)
>
> If you _do_ need this table (because you want to constrain your
> statistical data to only contain a specific set of years, or
> because you
> need a quick list of available years to select from): Make the year
> primary key and drop the artificial index.
>
> Years are perfectly fine data to constrain on, and it saves you the
> joins with that table (the foreign key constraint constrains your data
> sufficiently).

If my years are not only single years such as 1970, 1971... but time
spans, such as 1970-75.... should your proposal be still valid? It
won't be anymore an integer field, but a text field instead...

Stef