Best way to model Customer <--> Address

Question

Every Customer has a physical address and an optional mailing address. What is your preferred way to model this?

Option 1. Customer has fo

Answer 1

I tend towards first approach for all the usual reasons of normalisation. This approach also makes it easier to perform data cleansing on mailing details.

If you are possibly going to allow multiple addresses (mail, residential, etc) or wish to be able to use effective dates, consider this approach

   Customer   (id, phys_address_id)
   Cust_address_type (cust_id, mail_address_id, address_type, start_date, end_date)
   Address    (id, street, city, etc.)