Question

I have two classes(Book,Software) that inherit from the Product class. these two classes have some fields that are different from each other. if i am to save the data for both these classes to a single table it would cause some columns to have null values.

if i save the data into different tables(Books table and Software Table) and then wanted to view this data in a single gridview, would i have to join the data and then load it to the gridview?

I would like to add 2 more classes(IndividualCustomer, WholesaleCustomer) later on which will inherit the Customer class in the same manner as mentioned above.

please guide me towards the best approach.thank you

Answer 1

I’m no C# programmer, but I’d go with something like

`products` table
 - product_id (pk)
 - title
 - price
 - etc

`products_software` table
 - software_id (pk)
 - product_id (foreign key, relates to a product_id)
 - serial_number
 - storage_media

`products_books` table
 - book_id (pk)
 - product_id (foreign key, relates to a product_id)
 - pages
 - author