Question

15 ECTS credits worth of database design down the bin.. I really can’t come up with the best design solution for my problem.

Which is this: Basically I’m making a tool that gathers a lot of information concerning the user. At the most the user would fill in 50 fields of data, ranging from simple checkboxes to text input. I’m designing the db right now (with mySql) and can’t decide whether or not to use a single User table with all of those fields, or to have a table for each category of input.

One example would be “type of payment”. This one has three options and if I went with the “table” way I would add a table paymentType and give it binary fields for each payment type. Then I would need and id table to identify which paymentType the user has chosen whereas if I use a single user table, the data would already be there.

The site will probably see a lot of users (tv, internet and radio marketing) so I’m concerned which alternative would be the best.

I’ll be happy to provide more details if you need more to base a decision.

Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Create your “Type of Payment” table; there’s no real question there. That’s proper normalization and the power behind using relational databases. One of the many reasons to do so is the ability to update a Type of Payment record and not have to touch the related data in your users table. Your join between the two tables will allow your app to see the updated type of payment info by changing it in just the 1 place.

Regarding your other fields, they may not be as clear cut. The question to ask yourself about each field is “does this field relate only to a user or does it have meaning and possible use in its own right?”. If you can never imagine a field having meaning outside of the context of a user you’re safe leaving it as a field on the user table, otherwise do the primary key-foreign key relationship and put the information in its own table.