# eci.souji@xxxxxxxxx / 2006-05-28 16:13:20 -0400: > Basically we've got several different "states" that an item can be in. > From what I've seen the way many places seem to deal with them is > something along the lines of making bool values that act as > switches... > > Ex: > table items: > item_id > name > description > is_active > is_sold_out > is_banned > > Now we've started to see some problems with this sort of design. > Namely we need to run sanity tests on every page that hits the items > table to make sure is_active is true, is_sold_out is false, is_banned > is false so on and so forth. I was thinking of splitting up states > into different tables ala... > > table items_active: > item_active_id > name > description > > table items_sold_out: > item_sold_out_id > name > description would views help? CREATE VIEW items_to_sell AS SELECT item_id, name, description FROM items WHERE is_active = 1 AND is_sold_out = 0 AND is_banned = 0; -- How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb? You don't know, man. You don't KNOW. Cause you weren't THERE. http://bash.org/?255991