Question

I have to create a table in sql where one of the columns stores awards for a movie. The schema says it should store something like Oscar, screenplay. Is it possible to store two values in the same field in SQL. If so what datatype would that be and how would you query the table for it?

Answer 1

It’s a horrible design pattern to store more than one piece of data in a single column in a relational database. The exact design of your system depends on several things, but here is one possible way to model it:

CREATE TABLE Movie_Awards (
    movie_id    INT    NOT NULL,
    award_id    INT    NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT PK_Movie_Awards PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (movie_id, award_id)
)

CREATE TABLE Movies (
    movie_id         INT            NOT NULL,
    title            VARCHAR(50)    NOT NULL,
    year_released    SMALLINT       NULL,
    ...
    CONSTRAINT PK_Movies PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (movie_id)
)

CREATE TABLE Awards (
    award_id    INT            NOT NULL,
    ceremony_id INT            NOT NULL,
    name        VARCHAR(50)    NOT NULL,    -- Ex: Best Picture
    CONSTRAINT PK_Awards PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (award_id)
)

CREATE TABLE Ceremonies (
    ceremony_id    INT            NOT NULL,
    name           VARCHAR(50)    NOT NULL,    -- Ex: "Academy Awards"
    nickname       VARCHAR(50)    NULL,        -- Ex: "Oscars"
    CONSTRAINT PK_Ceremonies PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (ceremony_id)
)

I didn’t include Foreign Key constraints here, but hopefully they should be pretty obvious.