Sparse Repositories
Sparse repositories have many columns that do not apply to all the records and may be null for most. Such null columns are efficiently handled by databases.
TIBCO MDM does not allow inheritance. This means that if the model requires you to model subobjects that vary slightly, model them in the same repository and use a record type to identify different types of objects. This is called denormalization of the data model.
Repositories have a limit of 1024 attributes. However, with category-specific attributes, you can define unlimited attributes as category-specific. You can use this method to exceed 1024 attributes in a repository.
It is a best practice to use shared tables whenever possible for multivalue and category specific attributes. Too many tables adversely affects performance. Use a separate table for a column which is likely to be present for most records and if number of records are large, resulting in a large table with count more than 50 million.