Question

Consider this table on SQL Server

wordID    aliasID    value
===========================
0         0          'cat'
1         0          'dog'
2         0          'argh'
2         1          'ugh'

WordID is a id of a word which possibly has aliases. AliasID determines a specific alias to a word.

So above ‘argh’ and ‘ugh’ are aliases to each other.

I’d like to be able to insert new words which do not have any aliases in the table without having to query the table for a free wordID value first. Inserting value ‘hey’ without specifying a wordID or an aliasID, a row looking like this would be created:

wordID    aliasID    value
===========================
3         0          'hey'

Is this possible and how?

Answer 1

I’ve had to build a similar thing, and normalization will make your life much easier. Pseudocode:

TABLE Word
    int WordID IDENTITY
    string reference_value /* just for debugging */

TABLE Synonym
    int SynonymID IDENTITY
    int WordID
    string value