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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T11:28:24+00:00

I am creating a database for a publishing company. The company has around 1300

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I am creating a database for a publishing company. The company has around 1300 books and around 6-7 offices. Now i have created a table that displays the stock items in all locations. The table should look like following to the user:

Book Name          Location1            Location2          Location3 ......
History              20000               3000               4354
Computers             4000               688                344
Maths                 3046               300                0
...

I already have a Books table which stores all the details of the books, i also have a office table which has the office information. Now if i create a stock management table which shows the information like above i will end up in a huge table with a lot of repetition if i store my data in the following way: 

Column1- Book_ID   Column2- Location_ID     Column3- Quantity
     1                  1                        20000
     1                  2                        3000
     1                  3                        4354
     2                  1                        4000
     2                  2                        688
   ...

So, i think this isn’t the best way to store data as it would end up with 1300 (Books) X 7 (Locations) = 9100 rows. Is there a better way of storing data. Now i can have 7 additional columns in the Books stable but if i create a new location, i will have to add another column to the Books table.

I would appreciate any advice or if you think that the above method is suitable or not.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Nope, that’s the best way to do it.

    What you have is a Many-to-Many relationship between Books and Locations. This is, in almost all cases, stored in the database as an “associative” table between the two main entities. In your case, you also have additional information about that association, namely, it’s “stock” or “quantity” (or, if you think about it like a Graph, the magnitude of the connection, or edge-weight).

    So, it might seem like you have a lot of “duplication”, but you don’t really. If you were to try to do it any other way, it would be much less flexible. For example, with the design you have now, it doesn’t require any database schema change to add another thousand different books or another 20 locations.

    If you were to try to put the book quantities inside the Locations table, or the Locations inside the Books table, it would require you to change the layout of the database, and then re-test any code that might be use it.

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