What is the best schema design for child collection with a "primary" entity

Posted by erg39 on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by erg39
Published on 2010-05-18T04:13:52Z Indexed on 2010/05/18 4:20 UTC
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database-schema

Here is the scenario: You have a Persons table with a one-to-many relationship with an Addresses table, where one of the Address rows is the "primary" Address.

Is it better in a normalized schema to

Use a Persons.PrimaryAddressID to access the "primary" Address for a Person

or

Use an Addresses.IsPrimary bit column to reference the "primary" Address for a Person via Addresses.PersonID

or

Other

and why?

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