Multiple FKs in One Cell

[intern]

I have a table which lists Area of Work, Work Started, Work Ended, Contact_FK. I have another table which lists the Contact_PK, Contact Name, Contact Email, and Contact Phone. In the first table, I would like to list two contact FKs in one cell (as seen in the bottom right cell of the first table below). Is this possible?

Area of Work	Work Started	Work Ended	Contact_FK
Downtown	3/23/13	3/31/13	1
Midtown	4/1/13	4/30/13	1,2

Contact_PK	Contact Name	Contact Email	Contact Phone
1	John Deere	john@deere.com	(800)555-1234
2	Joe Schmoe	joe@schmoe.net	(800)555-4321

[orange]

In plain English what do the proposed 2 FKs represent?

eg. Can you have more than 1WorkActivity in a WorkLocation at the same time?
Can more than 1 Person be the Contact for a WorkActivity?

I think you have to define Work more precisely for readers to understand your setup.
You could consider "Units of Work" as Tasks or Projects.
A Project can have 1 or many WorkSessions.
A Project can have 1 or Many Contacts.


If yes to these, then I think your table structures may be an issue.

Project--+-->WorkSession---->Worker
        |             |
        |             |
        |             V  
        V          WorkLocation
       Contact

[intern]

I've decided to make multiple columns (Contact_1, Contact_2, etc.). It's not the most elegant, but it will do for my needs.

[pbaldy]

Multiple values in one field and repeating fields are both no-no's from a normalization standpoint. The proper design would be a related table with a record for each contact (basically a many-to-many junction table).