Question

I am currently working with a db that utilizes a subtype / supertype structure. I am wondering the best approach to handling INSERTs. Do I keep the population of multiple tables in the SQL itself, or with PHP, or even a combo of the two?

I am using MySQL / PHP (w/ Yii Framework)

///EDIT///

Don’t know whats up with a down vote. Didn’t realize the importance of any tables as this is a general approach question. But here is an example. If a Party is created how do Business and or User get populated with that PartyId? SQL/PHP/Both?

Answer 1

The “standard” approach is to create one updatable view for each subtype. Each updatable view joins the supertype with one subtype.

Then application code usually uses the view, not the base tables.

On most platforms, that means you need to write some triggers.