I know this may be a simple question and if I knew what I was looking for in specific I might be able to find it on my own. However this idea is a little out of the box in my line of normal thinking. So the question is, can I store an object/array of data in a single column that is actually searchable without having to break the object/array down with server-side script.
What the concept is, is I have a table in my db currently and its not even a definite table currently. But what I was initially thinking of having is a single table that each row will have a unique id and with this id a set of numbers (or more if I can actually store an object). What this data is, is my hope for not have rows of what could be redundant data. This is part of a one-to-many / many-to-many concept. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is Google+ and it’s “Circles” I want to be able to take a set of things group them together in a Circle like thing. Where if I choose that circle it will only show to those I want it show to.
Maybe I have this all wrong. If so, if someone can point me in a more solid direction that would be awesome. Bottom line is, I have a series of tables that have one distinct ID across all of them that is unique. This table is hoped to bridge some of those IDs to other things I have in the works. Where I can group these IDs together with one distinct id.
You probably want to implement an ER diagram like this example:
A user can have zero, one or more circles.
Then there’s a many-to-many relationship between users and circles.