Question

I am trying to create a website that retrieves photos for users randomly and without repetition for specific user, till the user see all the photos and init the records for the user.

I thought to have for each user and photo(URL saved) table, a user_photo table, that specifies if the user already saw the photo, but in case of many users and many photos, this will be a huge record.

my question is if there is a better design to retrieve data faster and efficient.

I saw other questions but not related to specific user handling.

Answer 1

1. Create a column in your photo table of DateTime type .
2. Now, Update all the records with current date time value.
3. Select a record with Order by clause Ascending
4. When you have seen the record, update the same record with current date and now fetch the record next time using step 3.

This will definitely help you alot…

EDIT

Below is my suggestion….

1. While going to select the records from database, don’t go for Inner /Left Join directly between user_Photo and Photo Tables.
2. Create a Temp table and insert the required records(I meant, while retrieving the photos for User_ID => 1, you need to select the User ID => 1 – photos from this table(user_Photo table) and insert into a Local temp table. Fine? )
3. Do a Left/Inner Join now between Photo and Temp table to get the records with Order by Clause Ascending

Hope this will help you….