What is the meaning of this anomaly warning message?

Question

I have run an analysis with SchemaSpy.

The tool gave me a warning message for two tables. The warning message is:

Tables with incrementing column names, potentially indicating denormalization

What is meaning of the above error?

For reference :

http://schemaspy.sourceforge.net/sample/anomalies.html

Answer 1

Based on the sample table in your link, I'd suggest it's taking issue with fields such as:

phone1
phone2

or

notes1
notes2
notes3

This may indicate a design flaw (but not always), and if so, one that can probably be corrected by more descriptive field names or perhaps a child table.

For example, someone might have more than one phone number... what if someone has three? Seven? Maybe data like this should be in a subtable, and perhaps even with some sort of indicator of what type of phone number it is, whether it's a preferred phone number, etc. Alternatively, maybe just renaming the fields to phone_home and phone_cell will be enough to eliminate confusion and allow you to collect all of the data you need.