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Asked: 2026-05-16T20:07:56+00:00

I’m doing an inventory for a game, rather like a FF-style game. I have

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I’m doing an inventory for a game, rather like a FF-style game. I have two design in mind, and wonder which is better

  1. Keep track of quantity as a field; the schema would be:
    item ( <item_id>, <character_id>, quantity ). If a character equip an item, or remove an item from his inventory, I would need to make sure the quantity field is correct.

  2. Each item takes up a separate row. I will use GROUP BY to calculate the quantity of each type of item (by item_id). Equipping and removing items become more straightforward, though if the character has ten healing potions they would take up ten rows.

There are current no space constraint or limit on the programming (using MySQL). Which is the better system for the long run?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It sounds like there’s a one-to-many relationship between characters and items in there somewhere.

    I would recommend starting with quantity as a derived item using GROUP BY. I’d only change it if performance became an issue.

    I don’t like the design where an item has to keep track of its quantity, but if you had to do it you could accomplish it with a trigger in MySQL to update the quantity automatically on INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE.

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