Question

I am in the process of developing a database with the following headings:

Region , City , Suburb

Each heading will have around 4000 rows so I am guessing it would be better if I use a separate table instead of one table with many columns.

What would be the best way to set the Region id City id and Suburb id? for when I want to select the specific regions information?

Answer 1

While there are several ways that you could model these tables, here is one way to set it up:

Region
id int, -- PK
name varchar(50)

City
id int, -- PK
region_id int, -- FK
name varchar(50)

Suburb
id int, -- PK
city_id int, -- FK
name varchar(50)

Then if you needed data you would JOIN the tables

SELECT r.name as RegionName
    , c.name as CityName
    , s.name as SuburbName
FROM Region r
INNER JOIN City c
    ON r.id = c.region_id
INNER JOIN Suburb s
    ON c.id = s.city_id