The standard relational way is a relationship table: children --------- FK_parentID (parent) FK_childrenID (child) PRIMARY KEY ( FK_parentID, FK_childrenID ) HTH Ignatius ____________________________________________ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alain Barthélemy" <cassandre@bartydeux.be> To: "php-db" <php-db@lists.php.net> Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 6:36 PM Subject: several pointers to records in one field > Hello, > > I started to use PHP with MySQL last december. > Personal use: list of inhabitants of a town in the 15th century > > Problem is the following: one person has an arbitrary number of children. > It is heavy to have fields child1,child2,child3,...,childn containing the row > number of each child especially if the number of children is variable. > > When I played with Commodore VIC20 I used to put pointers to records in a > string in the form pointer1,pointer2,...,pointern in a string. > > I think of using explode and implode to put all the record numbers of the > children in one varchar field. > > If someone have a better idea? > > -- > Alain Barthélemy > cassandre@bartydeux.be > http://bartydeux.be > > -- > 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
