Question

I have a slight issue with a database design. I don’t how to solve a problem with different hierarchical structure of companies I have to take care of and store these information. I am trying to make database that can store info about people who I have already contacted or I am going to contact. I also need to store details regarding the company that a particular person work for. The problem is that companies have different structures. It may also be a university with schools and faculties, research institutes if I consider an academic role of someone’s job. For instance, a person works at the Univetsity of Oxford, at Schoold of Languages that is part of Faculty of Something. Now, another person may work for government etc in Department of Something. How would you solve this design related issue? I have to do it and I am not quite experienced with it yet.
I hope it is not confusing.

Answer 1

The exact answer to your question really depends on the precise requirements that you are yet to provide. That being said, the following idea is probably not a bad starting point from which to develop your database model:

• Organizations form a “wood” and each “tree” in that wood has “root” with NULL in PARENT_ORGANIZATION_ID.
• A single person can work for more than one organization and (of course) an organization can employ multiple persons. This many-to-many relationship is represented by a junction table WORKS_AT.