Is there a proper term in data modeling to describe the following?
Given table [order] table with an [order_status] column, which when first conceived has 5 acceptable values, obviously having 5 different meanings and at least > 1 behavior (but not necessarily 5 different behaviors) from an application perspective.
One would typically determine the explicit differences (especially that drive application behavior) between the acceptable values and create a lookup table with explicit columns defined to declare this fact for eack lookup table. For example, one might have [is_valid], [is_outstanding], [is_onhold] columns. And subsequently, both sql and application code would act upon these attribute columns, rather than using hardcoded references to the acceptable [order_status] values themselves, ie:
— get all active orders (using hardcoded values)
select * from order where order_status in (‘new’, ‘approved’, ‘on_hold’, ‘requires_confirmation’)
So, is there a proper term to refer to this practice?
Update
Of course this is simple logical common sense application design that one learns via experience, but I am hoping there happens to be a proper formal term for the practice (preferably within the domain of data modeling) documented somewhere to which I can refer a relatively inexperienced but overconfident consultant over whom I have no direct authority.
When code flow is determined by (potentially) mutable data in a table somewhere I’ve always seen this in the literature as “data-driven code”. State machines are classic examples, programs like file(1) which mostly work from the contents of /etc/magic are another.
If that doesn’t please, I’d pillage terminology from the Prolog literature.