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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-16T07:21:33+00:00

Hi I am trying to design a database for an e-commerce website but I

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Hi I am trying to design a database for an e-commerce website but I can’t seem to find a way to do this right, this is what I have so far:
schema

The problem appears at the products.I have 66 types of products most of them having different fields.I have to id’s but both of them don’t seem very practical:

OPTION A:

At first I thought I to make a table for each product type, but that would result in 66 tables which is not very easy to maintain. I already started to do that I created the Product_Notebook and Product_NotebookBag tables. And then I stopped and thought about it a bit and this solution is not very good.

OPTION B

After thinking about it a bit more I came up with option B which is storing the data into a separate field called description. For example:

"Color : Red & Compatibility : 15.6 & CPU : Intel"

In this approach I could take the string and manipulate it after retrieving it from the database.

I know this approach is also not a very good idea, that’s why I am asking for a more practical approach.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    See my answer to this question here on Stack Overflow. For your situation I recommend using Entity Attribute Value (EAV).

    As I explain in the linked answer, EAV is to be avoided almost all of the time for many good reasons. However, tracking product attributes for an online catalog is one application where the problems with EAV are minimal and the benefits are extensive.

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