Home/ Questions/Q 153629
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-11T09:50:05+00:00

I need to create a table of attributes where each record is essentially just

  • 0

I need to create a table of attributes where each record is essentially just a name-value pair. The problem is that the value can be a string, integer or decimal and I’m using MySQL which doesn’t support table inheritance. So, the question is – should I create a separate table for each value type or should I just create str_value, int_value and dec_value columns with an additional value_type column that tells you which type to use? There won’t be many records in this table (less than 100), so performance shouldn’t be much of an issue, but I just don’t want to make a design decision that’s going to make the SQL more complex than it has to be.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Having different tables, or even multiple columns where only one of the 3 are populated, is going to be a nightmare. Store it all as varchar along with a type column.

    • 0