Single row tables in data modeling
Single row tables are a fact of our life as as a data designer, data modeler, data programmer, data whatever. Whether you are setting up a data warehouse or an operational database, it happens often that you need to save a list of single values/parameters that are valid, temporarily or stably, for the whole application. These could be items such as date data (i.e. LastUpdate, CreationDate etc.), boolean data (i.e statusIsActive, isInTest, forceDataLoad etc.), numeric data (i.e. CurrentExchangeRate, refreshDays etc.) or even string data (currentLanguage, mainTitle, homeUrl etc.).
Usually we pour all these variables into