I can't remember C&D's 12 rules regarding relational databases, but a rough
paraphrase of one of them is that you do not need to know anything about
how data is stored to manipulate it, the database schema should provide all
that information. Another one is that you never repeat information that can
be broken out and stored in another table.
You have to normalize your data, so in this case you would add a field,
call it EventHost with fields
PriKey
EventId
RspOrg
EventId is a foreign key, referencing the field in the Event table which
identifies the event, and RspOrg is a foreign key which references the key
values in the, lets call it Organization (or Host) table. (PriKey is the
primary key for the table, a field which hard experience has convinced me
to have in all database tables, though in this case it may not be needed.)
Indexes on these fields will assure that your queries will be optimized and
you won't be condemned to sequential reads of the database while fields are
evaluated by expressions like "...where '$id' in (events.ids)..." .
The Event table no longer needs a RspOrg field, and you can determine
additional information about the host organization or the event through
this table. You may also add fields such as HostLevel which indicates
whether the RspOrg is a primary or secondary host, and so forth.
It's time to Google for a primer on SQL databases and normalization, work
through a couple, and to ask yourself what kind of questions you will be
asking of your database.
Regards - Miles Thompson
At 12:41 PM 11/10/2002 +0200, you wrote:
>Hi. I have a database designing question to ask.
>I want to build a table of events. Among the other fields there must be a
>field that holds the 'responsible organization' of the event. This
>organization of course will be responsible for other events as well so I
>have to create another table that holds the organizations (id, name, phones,
>director etc) and then just pull the organization id to the events table.
>The problem is that it happens too often to have 2 organizations responsible
>for the same event so I'll have to add them both to the events table in the
>same record.
>
>How do you advice me to do that?
>I thought that I could use a text field to hold the ids and then when
>searching the database just change the MySQL command from
>"...where events.id='$id'..." (As it would be if only one id was going to be
>used) to
>"...where '$id' in (events.ids)..." or maybe something using LIKE.
>
>Do you think it can be done this way? Apart from the responsible
>organization I may have other fields in the same table having the same
>problem (for example: the event visitors are staying in one hotel and I want
>to hold control of the hotels as well. Maybe 2 hotels are used instead of
>one). If I solve my problem this way, do you think that it will be too
>difficult or 'heavy' to have more than one condition like this in my
>queries?
>Do you think of any other way?
>
>Thanx in advance....
>Achilles
>
>
>--
>PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
>To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
--
PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
