What is normalisation and why should you care? Normalisation is the removal of duplicate data across tables in database. You wouldn’t store a customers complete details against each purchase order, you would store the customer details in a separate table and link your purchase order table to it via a ‘key’. Now the Sage Line 500 database (schema), to be blunt, is dreadful. It doesn’t follow any conventions, has poor normalisation and has virtually no business logic (referential integrity) in the database. In it’s defence its due mainly to the legacy of it being a product that has existed in one guise or another for many many years.

Why should you care, Line 500 works fine right? Sure it does but make sure if you have any enhancement work carried out your are not paying the supplier for their learning curve of the database. I guarantee it will be like no other database they will have worked with and no formal documentation exists which makes things harder! I’ve worked with many bespoke providers during Line 500 implementations/migrations/enhancements and time and time get asked, “What table is so and so data stored in?”