Question

I have the following information that should be retrieved by using several dependent select fields on a web form:

Users will be able to add new categories.

Food
 - Fruits
   - Tropical
      - Pineapples
          - Pineapples - Brazil
          - Pineapples - Hawaii
      - Coconuts
   - Continental
      - Orange
 - Fish

....

This data should come from a database.

I realize that creating a table for each category here presented is not a good schema perhaps, so I would to ask, if is there any standard way to deal with this?

I’m also aware of this schema example:
Managing Hierarchical Data in MySQL

Is there any other (perhaps more intuitive way) to store this type of information ?

Answer 1

The link you provided describes the two standard ways for storing this type of information:

• Adjacency List
• Nested Sets