Question

I have three master tables for location information

1. Country {ID, Name}
2. State {ID, Name, CountryID}
3. City {ID, Name, StateID}

Now I have one transcation table called Person which hold the person name and his location information.

My Question is shall I have only CityID in the Person table like this:

Person {ID, Name, CityID}’

And have view of join query which give me detail like “Person{ID,Name,City,State,Country}”

or Shall I replicate the mapping

Person {ID, Name, CityID, StateID, CountryID}

Please suggest which do you feel is to be selected and why? if there is any other option available, please suggest.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I would just use a reference table, which will allow you to have more expandability in the future:

Person {ID, Name}
PersonLocation {PersonID, CityID}

Just pay attention to the primary key you use on the PERSON table, so you can distinguish one record from the other