I’m making an online quiz with php and mysql and need a bit of help deciding how to design the database for optimal insert of questions/answers and to select questions for the quiz. The table will hold 80 questions each with 4 possible options plus the correct answer.
When retrieving the questions and options from the database I will randomly select 25 questions and their options.
Is it better to make a single column for all questions, options, and correct answers? For example:
ID | Q | OPT1 | OPT2 | OPT3 | OPT4 | ANS
Or would it be better to make a column for each individual question, option, and correct answer? For example:
Q1 | Q1_OPT1 | Q1_OPT2 | Q1_OPT3 | Q1_OPT5 | Q1_ANS | Q2 | Q2_OPT1 | Q2_OPT2...
It’d be better to store the possible answers in a seperate table. This allows you to have any amount of answers per question instead of just 4. It also allows questions to have a different number of answers. If you have more than one quiz, you may also want a Quizes Table.
Now the correct answer thing gets a lot more tricky. I prefer the higher implementations here:
Each question has a value and each answer has value
A system I recently worked with you could assign a point value for each question and each answer. Incorrect answers often got 0, correct answers got the full amount. You could also have partially-correct answers using this method. This is the method I would go with.
You could go and say every question is worth 10 points or you could assign different weights to different questions:
Store the correct answer in the Answers Table
A more simple (but less robust) solution is to simply say which answer is correct in the Answers table.
Store the correct answer in the Questions Table
I wouldn’t recommend it. When you create a question, it won’t have a correct answer until you insert one. This means at least 3 queries to correctly make a question. If you use foreign key dependencies, this will quickly get annoying.