Question

In trying to create better, more consistent conventions I wanted to get feedback on the following options. The scenarios I’m using involved recording whether an item is shipped to an existing address or a new one.

Both of these setups would get the point across, but are their additional pros and cons I’m not thinking of, or conventions on which is better?

    field name: ship_to
       option 1: new_address
       option 2: existing_address

Pro: 
- Allows for new options down the road if needed.
- Easier to grasp what's going on when looking just a the database

Cons: 
- Not easier to grasp in the code - have to remember the options



    field name: ship_to_new_address
       option 1: true
       option 2: false

Pros / Cons - Pretty much the opposite of what I listed above.

Answer 1

There is a third option:

• Put addresses in a table of their own (probably with an owner column linking back to your user/account table).
• Use a ship_to column that points to the address table with a foreign key.

Pros:

• Each person can have as many addresses as they need (home, office, cottage, friends, …).
• Nicely normalized.

The only con I can think of is that you’ll have to do more joins but joins aren’t really a bad thing. You may need a bit more sanity checking to make sure all the ownerships line up nicely but that’s not a big deal either.