I'm doing some custom work with Magento, which has a database design based upon the EAV model, and I need some good resources/tutorials that explain the EAV database model. Please don't provide Wikipedia as a resource... I'm looking for something that teaches EAV in a friendly way for beginners.
+2
A:
The friendliest thing you can do for a beginner is to teach them the down side of EAV.
The up side of EAV is so seductive that a lot of newbies will dig a very big hole for themselves before they realize it.
Hopefully the google search will reveal at least some of the down side.
Walter Mitty
2009-01-30 06:57:42
+6
A:
Here you go. An illustrative story: http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/opinion-pieces/bad-carma/
David Aldridge
2009-01-31 05:10:47
how is this horror story even remotely related to the question?
Steven A. Lowe
2009-07-28 15:30:43
Um ... bcause it describes the real-world implementation of an EAV-based system from the pov of someone who was there, and the entirely predictable consequences of that design choice.
David Aldridge
2009-07-28 23:22:58
It is relevant to the original question. The answer to using Magento is Joe's whiteboard message, "Run Like Hell!"
Bill Karwin
2009-08-06 16:24:18
The EAV model is a slippery slope. It can work fine in a small tightly-scoped database, but blows up in your face the nearer you get to a production system. Use it as a prototyping tool to iterate the database design, but don't even think about building the system for real. Bad Carma is so close to my own experiences that it makes my flesh creep. My own take on EAV is here http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/philfactor/archive/2008/05/29/56525.aspx
Phil Factor
2010-10-10 14:00:21
+1
A:
In a nutshell, EAV is optimized for getting data in, not getting data out. But that might be an acceptable trade-off. I managed a project that had to develop a general clinical trial data management system. There could not be many common data elements because each trial needs to collect different data. Capturing data was urgent; we had to develop data entry pages under pressure. Reports are harder with EAV, but they're also less urgent, and with some clever thought they can be simplified a bit. EAV has served us well.
John D. Cook
2009-01-31 05:34:51
A:
See Dinua V, and Nadkarnia P. Guidelines for the Effective Use of Entity-Attribute-Value Modeling for Biomedical Databases. Int J Med Inform. 2007 ; 76: 769–779. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2110957