# Data redundancy or not?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/data-redundancy-or-not/144308>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [July 28, 2008, 3:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/data-redundancy-or-not/144308 "2008-07-28T15:03:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![remcoh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/c37758/32.png) [@remcoh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/remcoh)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2008, 3:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/data-redundancy-or-not/144308/1 "2008-07-28T15:03:34Z")

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Hi,  
perhaps a bit off topic but i realy want to know what you rails people  
think of the following situation:

i am building a shift trading application, so i have a table with shifts  
and a table with transactions.

in the transactions table i keep track of the movement of shifts between  
users. i have the fields from\_user, to\_user and status the status can be

- offered for trade (1)
- in negotiation (2)
- transaction completed (3)

so, when i take a shift, i can always determine the status of it as  
follows:  
if there are no associated records in the transactions table, i can  
offer it for trade.  
i can also do this when there are no transactions with status 1 or 2

of course this is not too complicated to figure out, but adding an extra  
status field on the shift recored is much easier to work with.

so: what would you do?  
add the extra field or keep the design clean?