Richard posts about a few different ways (and some of them are news to me) to avoid using a simple lookup table and relation in your DB for silly stuff like Gender(Male,female,unknown) or daysOfWeek.

Really interesting. I must say that I've always used the lookup table+ relation approach, simply because I did not know better. Next time I do this,I'll keep these ways in mind.

Now, here's a tough question: Have you ever seen these ways explained in a book about data access or database manipulation techniques? I have'nt. Have I been reading the wrong books? which books do you recommend to learn about “real world” stuff such as this? Especially SQL server.