What kind of apps do you think are more suited for this? Just curious.
Another thing might be 30Boxes or whatever favorite calendar app you have. Sure, you can sync the feed to iCal, but you can't do everything off a feed.
Particularly the three-part series.
Multiple-columns can be hard to deal with. But duplicate rows because you're using an autoincrement integer as your pk are also a pain in the ass. Measure twice, cut once.
I suppose in a fully normalized world of enterprise db architecture this could be an issue, but most real world applications aren't built that way.
In reality, speed is key, models are simple and normalized data is usually the bottleneck, and as such, de-normalized PDQ.
I know the theory is whack and risks problems, but reality pays the bills in most cases, so it wins.
I currently work for a company (yeah, yeah; the startup is gonna be next year, once I graduate) that produces software for health care agencies. We're writing the next version of our app in Rails, but the problem is that a significant number of our customers need to be able to use the app out in the boonies. Out where if they're lucky, they have _analog_ cell phone service.
There is a real need for offline capability for webapps; you just don't see it when you keep your eyes on 37Signals-type apps.