Question

I have designed the following but I am looking for a simpler way to design it (currently when I am going to retrieve list of subcategories that user is interested I should have different queries for each type of sport) :

User table has users info each user is interested in number of sport categories, each category has different subcategories, user can be interested in category (all subcategories) or just a number of subcategories of a particular category.

User      UserID                                         12

Sport     CategoryID Category                            1 Aquatic,    2 Running 

Aquatic   SubCategoryID SubCategory,CategoryID           1 Swimming 1, 2 Surfing 2 

Running   SubCateogryID SubCategory,CategoryID           1 200m 2,     2 300m 2 

LikeSport UserID CateogryID SubCategoryID                12 1 1,       12 2 nill

It shows user with ID 12 likes Aquatic sport but just Swimming and likes all type of Running Sports.

Answer 1

Users:                         UserID
Categories:                    CategoryID, CategoryName
Subcategories:                 SubcategoryID, SubcategoryName
CategoriesSubcategories:       CategorySubcategoryID, CategoryID, SubcategoryID
LikeSports:                    UserID, CategorySubcategoryID