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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T13:48:13+00:00

I have a table that holds information about a particular Object, Say Item and

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I have a table that holds information about a particular Object, Say Item and has columns

ItemID, ItemName, price, ItemListingType…..LastOrderDate

One of the bits of information, ItemListingType could be one of 10 different types
such as:

private, gov, non-gov, business… etc (strings) and could be extended to more types in future.

Should I be using a column inside table ITEM or should I Use a separate table with two columns and put a foreign key in Item table to reference that (a one to many relationship)? Like:

  • ListingTypeID int

  • ListingTypeName varchar(MAX)

EDIT: how many values for a column, you will consider to use another table for that

2, 4 or what ?

Thanks

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use a separate table to store this kind of reference data. This is a tenet of normalization and will also enable easier caching because you are separating read-only and read-write data. my two cents…

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