Should I use an inline varchar(max) column or store it in a separate table?

Question

I want to create a table in MS SQL Server 2005 to record details of certain system operations. As you can see from the table design below, every column apart from Deta

Answer 1

I would normalize it by creating the Detail table. I assume some of the entries in Log will have the same Detail? So if you normalize it you will only be storing an FK id INTEGER instead of the text for every occurrence if you stored the text on the Detail table. If you have reasons to de-normalize do it, but from your question I don't see that being the case.