Question

I have an e-commerce MySQL database with the following tables:

**Product**
----------
productID - 1
categoryID - 1
productName - Cricket Bat



**prodOptions**
----------
optionID - 1
productID - 1
optionName - Bat Size

<PK>optionID - 2
<FK>productID - 1
optionName - Bat Weight


**optionValues**
----------
optionValuesID - 1
optionID - 1
optionValue - Small

optionValuesID - 1
optionID - 1
optionValue - Heavy



**orders**
----------
orderID - 1
custID - 1


**orderContent**
----------
orderID - 1
orderContentID - 1
prodID - 1
optionNameID - 1,2
optionValuesId - 1,2

As you can see, each cricket bat has multiple options. How can I store all of the options in the order content table without entering two or more ID numbers in a row?

Answer 1

Add in a new orderOptions table, which contains a row for each option selected:

**orderOptions**
----------------
orderId - 1    optionId - 1   optionValue - 1
orderId - 1    optionId - 2   optionValue - 2

Thus orderId can appear twice (or more) in this table; PK is the combination of orderId and optionId.