Question

i have a database table prop_amenities which have following columns

here is the create table i am using for the above table

CREATE TABLE `prop_amenities` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `amenity_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `property_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),
  UNIQUE KEY `propAmenities` (`amenity_id`,`property_id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

i will be storing multiple amenity id’s for a single property_id, here is the example of the values i have stored.

however this works just fine while inserting, but while updating it is a real problem, if for example i have to delete and add more amenity_id i have to perform two database trip first delete the value and then add the new one.

to make it feel nicer i thought of using serialize() or json_encode() to store the array of amenity_id in database. this way i could reduce the number of column i.e it will be one column per property_id.

Database column after using serialize()

What do you think which solution better fits the situation here?

Thank you

Answer 1

You need to ask yourself if you will ever need to care in a query which ones are selected. If the answer is an absolute “no” then serialization is acceptable. Otherwise, stick to the properly-normalized form.