Question

I’m currently designing a comments table for a site I’m building. Users will be able to upload images, link videos and add audio files to the profile.

Each of these types of content must be commentable. Now I’m wondering what’s the best approach to this.

My current options are:

1. to have one big comments table and a link tables for every content type (comments_videos, …) with comment_id and _id.

2. to have comments separated by the type of content their for. So each type of content would have his own comments table with the comments for that type.

Answer 1

For only 1 comment per file make a single table like this:

Comments
CommentID     int identity/auto generate Primary key
CommentType   char(1) or tinyint/byte etc FK to CommentTypes table
Comment       string
CreateDate    date/time
CreateUserID  int  FK

in the other tables use it like this:

Video
VideoID
Video...
CommentID  FK

Audio
AudioID
Audio...
CommentID  FK

For multiple comments per file make a single table like this:

Comments
CommentID     int identity/auto generate Primary key
MediaID       int --no explicit FK, but can join to VideoID,AudioID etc on this
CommentType   char(1) or tinyint/byte etc FK to CommentTypes table
Comment       string
CreateDate    date/time
CreateUserID  int  FK

in the other tables use it like this:

Video
VideoID    int identity/auto generate Primary key, joins to Comments.MediaID
Video...


Audio
AudioID    int identity/auto generate Primary key joins to Comments.MediaID
Audio...