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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T17:38:43+00:00

I have a doubt regarding a database design, suppose a finance/stock software in the

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I have a doubt regarding a database design, suppose a finance/stock software

in the software, the user will be able to create orders,
those orders may contain company products or third-party products

typical product table: 

PRIMARY KEY INT productId  
KEY INT productcatId
KEY INT supplierId
VARCHAR(20) name
TEXT description
...

but i also need some more details in the company products like: 

INT instock  
DATETIME laststockupdate  
...

The question is, how should i store the data?
I’m thinking in 2 options:

1 –
Have both company and third-party, products in a single table,
some columns will not be used by third-party products
identify the company products are identified by a supplier id

2 –
Have the company products and third-party in separated tables

3 – [new, thanks RibaldEddie]
Have a single product table,
company products have additional info in a separated table

Thanks in advance!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You didn’t mention anything about needing to store separate bits of Vendor information, just that a type of product has extra information. So, you could have one products table and an InHouseProductDetails table that has a productId foreign key back to the products table that stores the company specific information. Then when you run your queries you can join the products table to the details table.

    The benefit is that you don’t have to have NULLable columns in the products table, so your data is safer from corruption and you don’t have to store the products themselves in two separate tables.

    Oooo go with 3! 3 is the best!

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