My impression is that the anchor model is based on a couple of flawed assumptions.
My summary: The anchor model is using a single modelling pattern for everything, even if not needed. A proper data model uses the parts that make sense when it makes sense. And if the business problem requires the anchor model for everything, a NoSQL database is the better fit anyhow.
For example, one advantage of the anchor model is that it does not store the long attribute text in the table but just a short attribute key. Fine. However, many databases use dictionary compression, so they encode e.g. bit=0 means "female", bit=1 means "male". They do exactly the same thing just more efficiently.
And if your database does not, you use a separate table, e.g. the main table stores the country code and the country table has the country names (for different languages even?).
The second problem is that the query response times grows exponentially with the number of joins. It is not that 2 or 10 joins are a problem but at one point adding a single join will double the execution time. The business problems I deal with have a proper relational data model and still require 40 joins or more for anayltics.
The third problem is that joins are used for two things. Your example is to augment the client_id with more data like surname, email, address. But the other reason is to filter. Find me all customers that have an email at google, live in Toronto and are active. If all is in one table, one quick table scan produces the results. With this data model most databases will join the entire dataset and then apply the filter.
All of that is visible in the table sizes. What consumes less space? One table with client_id, surname, email, address? Or the tables with client_id and surname, client_id and email, client_id and address?
What I would like to see are the advantages of the anchor model in your use case (query speed? flexibility? load times?), how it would compare to a classic data model and when would the classic data model use the techniques of the anchor model.
