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    I agree - without additional context to 'the why', the number of columns really doesnt matter. There might legitimately be 96 things to track... or, he may be using addtional columns for 'arrays' of data (name_1, name_2) that should be broken up into other tables. Commented Oct 25, 2010 at 17:57
  • Oh you make me remember one thing... I will add it to my answer Commented Oct 25, 2010 at 18:01
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    "normalized" does not necessarily imply "well designed". I would consider the denormalization you describe here, to be a perfectly fine design decision. Commented Jan 8, 2011 at 13:50
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    I agree entirely with @GrandmasterB. The number of columns is not something that can be judged independently. There are times when a great deal of related data must be stored about a single thing. What should people do? Make a tagged-data table, (id, tag, value) and INSERT ninety odd rows? If the information belongs in a table and is justified then the column stays, unless it is causing a horrendous performance issue. Commented Jan 12, 2011 at 21:59
  • +1 Denormalization is necessary for certain applications. I'd argue that databases are not spreadsheets. Just because they have a similar table format doesn't necessarily mean that databases should be human-readable. They're a data back-end storage and should be treated as such. Commented Mar 18, 2011 at 12:46