Global Reference Table

A Global Reference Table is one of the most common types of tables that can be found in an application. It contains data that is referenced by many other parts of the application and is referred to as the definitive source of truth on a particular area of knowledge about the application. It is impossible to construct an exhaustive list, but some typical examples are lists of states, timezone choice lists, supported credit card types, data about purchasable items, and lists of subsections in a web site. Some Global Reference Tables can be a bit obscure or be lists that define the available lists. As examples, the list could be available alternate versions of Yes and No that are supported by parsers in your application (e.g True/False, 1/0, Y/N, etc.) or part of a definition of your database schema model.

When a Global Reference Table is stored as a RDD Data Table in the RDD Resource Format and RDD approaches are used for deploying and using the tables, a lot of common problems faced by mature applications can be solved.