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Asked: 2026-05-20T00:22:26+00:00

I have what seems like what could be a simple question but might be

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I have what seems like what could be a simple question but might be more difficult than anticipated. Let’s say I’m trying to track the latitude and longitude of Users and Businesses. Right now, I have a table called locTable, that contains 3 columns: Index, Latitude, Longitude.

The table that stores information for the Users and Businesses contain a FK to the locTable. This allows me to use one table to store the location data, however I’ve noticed doing queries on this data might be difficult.

Now, I could store Latitude and Longitude information in each table for Users and Businesses, however if I need to make changes regarding the data, I would have to update the queries along with two (or more) different tables.

What would you all suggest? Shared table or store the information separately?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    First off, establish whether lat/long is a “lookup” table. I would not consider Lat/Long to be a lookup. What that means is you would not store an exhaustive list of every possible Lat/Long combo. They are often specified to 4 decimal places. In theory there could be infinite Lat/Long combo’s if you have infinite scale.

    I would not consider it duplication to store lat/long in both tables. Think of BirthDates. To avoid BirthDate duplication you could have a “BirthDates” table with a row for every day in the last 300 years. This would avoid BirthDay duplication of people, dogs, and companies. But it is not duplication in the “lookup” sense.

    I am not suggesting it is wrong to store Lat/Long in it’s own table. I’m just suggesting it may not be considered duplication to store Lat/Long in both tables.

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