Question

I have a use case where a User can perform a Test. This is based on an Invite. So an admin can send an Invite to a User to perform a selected Test. It is also possible to create a Team of several Users and send an Invite to all the users of a Team to perform the Test for that Team.

There are several options to create these models, but I am not sure what is the best way (or perhaps there is even an alternative).

Option 1

• User: id, name
• Team: id, name
• UserTeam: user_id, team_id
• UserInvite: id, user_id
• TeamInvite: id, team_id
• Test: id, user_id, user_invite_id (can be null), team_invite_id (can be null), type [user|team]

Option 2

• User: id, name
• Team: id, name
• UserTeam: user_id, team_id
• Invite: id, user_id (can be null), team_id (can be null), type [user|team]
• Test: id, user_id, invite_id

So is it better to have seperate invites (for teams and users) and link the tests to a team-invite or a user-invite (like option 1). Or the alternative: have a single invite and determine then if it’s linked to a team or a user (like option 2)?

Answer 1

Personally, I’d go with your second option.

You might also want to investigate this third option, however. It makes it possible to store an invite sent to multiple teams and users:

user: id, name
team: id, name
invite: id
test: id, invite_id
user_invite: invite_id, user_id
team_invite: invite_id, team_id