This is not so much an EJB question but a question of database design. There is no such thing as "the right way" to it. It all depends on the data and what you want to do with it. One of the key question is: Should you normalize the data? This depends on what you want to do with that data. For example if you only want to dump records as fast as possible into the database I would use the fully denormalized form you suggested. However, this scenario is very unlikely. So usually you will want to have some denomalization. How much depends again what you want to do. If you will want to filter your partictpants according to different criteria you might consider a star schema. For maximum transaction speed you would prefer to normalize the data further. Normalization makes especially sense if you want to enforce data consistency. In your example you could move the former employers to a table of their own to make sure that there are no different spelling of the company's name. So I cannot really help you. You know best what you want to do with the data in your application. Regards Felix View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4048855#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...