Question

It is better to store json data in a affiliate_phone_id field or use separate table to normalise it?

For example:

mysql> select * from phone;
+----+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| id | name     | description | affiliate_phone_id                                                                        |
+----+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 32 | iPhone 5 | faster CPU  | [{"affiliate_id":2,"affiliate_phone_id":123},{"affiliate_id":3,"affiliate_phone_id":222}] |
+----+----------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The data above show that each retailer have own Phone ID, for instance:

Company 2 (affiliate_id = 2), their Phone ID is 123

or would it be better to do seperate table something like this:

mysql> select * from phone_affiliate;
+----+----------+--------------+--------------------+
| id | phone_id | affiliate_id | affiliate_phone_id |
+----+----------+--------------+--------------------+
|  1 |       32 |            2 | 123                |
|  2 |       32 |            3 | 222                |
+----+----------+--------------+--------------------+

Or any other better suggestion?

Answer 1

Normalized table.

Perhaps, you don’t need “id” field in phone_affiliate table. You can set primary key (phone_id, affiliate_id) or (phone_id, affiliate_id, affiliate_phone_id), it depends on relations between data.

mysql> select * from phone_affiliate;
+----------+--------------+--------------------+
| phone_id | affiliate_id | affiliate_phone_id |
+----+----------+--------------+---------------+
|       32 |            2 | 123                |
|       32 |            3 | 222                |
+----+----------+--------------+---------------+