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harshal_in
Aged Yak Warrior
633 Posts |
 Posted - 2002-10-09 : 05:52:21
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| I have to store the features for a user ,these features are predefined and I have a master table which has the id associated with each feature and I have a id for each feature.Now one user can have multiple features ,so I have to design a table to store these features related to each user.there are 25 features ,so if I take one field for each feature and one for the userId ,the number of columns become 26 .is this the right way to do it ??please advice.harshal. |
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smccreadie
Aged Yak Warrior
505 Posts |
Posted - 2002-10-09 : 08:37:12
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| That's one way to do it but you will have to change your table schema if the number of features changes.Another way is to have 3 tables.Table 1 - the usersTable 2 - the features (in rows)Table 3 - the user id and related feature id in rows.This way if a new feature is added, just add another row to Table 2. |
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harshal_in
Aged Yak Warrior
633 Posts |
Posted - 2002-10-09 : 09:24:47
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| but here the table size would grow a lot ,I am afraid at the end of the year I may end with a huge table.either ways ,if I choose my option the number of columns increase and if i choose the second option of having three tables the number of rows increases.so what is recomended???please advice.thnxs.harshal |
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robvolk
Most Valuable Yak
15732 Posts |
Posted - 2002-10-09 : 09:40:05
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| You'll use about the same amount of space with either structure. Moreover, you'll WASTE a lot of space using one table if certain users do not use all 25-26 features. You're much better off following Scott's suggestion. Not only is his design more efficient and modifiable, it's far more flexible when searching for users who match a certain set or number of features (and will search a lot faster than one wide table)Edited by - robvolk on 10/09/2002 09:41:22 |
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harshal_in
Aged Yak Warrior
633 Posts |
Posted - 2002-10-10 : 07:17:43
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thanks a lot!!! |
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designing a table !!