title: RnR: Database normalization, rails models and associations
body: <p>Ok, so I have three different objects: a person, place, and equipment.  Each can have an address, in most cases multiple address and multiple phone numbers.  So my thought is create the specific object tables, the have an address and a phone table.  Here my question:</p>
  
  <p>So typically, in my SQL world, I would just have an object_id column in the address and phone table and put a id of the object in the object id column, and then select all the address or phone records that match.  </p>
  
  <p>I could do this, do find_by_sql and get the records but I'd rather stay within the ActiveRecord paradigm.  So does that mean I should have an id column in the table for each object, so a person_id, place_id, etc.  </p>
  
  <p>What's the "right" way to model this?</p>