How do you know it's wrong? Normalization is not done in a vacuum, but rather in response to a problem. Anybody who normalizes all of his tables is a fool for not understanding when to apply that particular tool.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and in fact you may be correct (the odds do favor you :). It's just that you don't have enough information about the context of the problem to know that you are right. Besides Fire your database designer is hardly helpful.

How do you know it's wrong?

'Cause I am a wizard! Seriously, though, have a look at this snippet.

   All_Cancer int DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   Lung_Cancer int DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   Breast_Cancer int DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   Cervical_Cancer int DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   Colorectal_Cancer int DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
   Skin_Cancer int DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL,
[download]

Doesn't it scream "repeating columns" to you?

And what happens when somebody has some cancer not in this list? To me, these columns should be VALUES, while the column names should be "disease_code" and "disease_name". Typical symptom that the table is not even in first Normal Form.

Besides Fire your database designer is hardly helpful.

That's called a "sarcastic comment". Next time, I'll post a sign. ;-P

Each code represents a diagnosis that is potentially present in more than one disease column. I believe that this table is sensible. The whole point of this exercise is to automate the creation of this table and therefore the fact that it has many columns is not a problem.

I need a lookup table so that all the ICD codes for a particular disease can be lookup with a simple statement and this is why I wish to create the third table.

I don’t know whether this can be done with a series of SQL statements or whether Perl DBI could be used. I was assuming that Perl or equivalent should be used. I see no reason why this question should not be posted here.