Question

So I am writing a fairly simple Java application for a school project, which basically has to store some information about various companies that will be inputted by the user.

The kind of data will be something like:

Company1
    Survey1
        Category 1
            Question 1
            ....
        Category 2
        ....
    Survey2
    ....
Company2
....

I originally thought of using a sqlite db for storing this, but I am not sure how to store nested data like this in a db without repeating data a lot. Then I thought of using XML or something.

So what would be a good way to store this data: sql database, xml or something else?

Answer 1

Store as XML or store it in a db like this:

TABLE Companies
-------------------
CID (INT) | SID (INT REF)
-------------------

TABLE Surveys
-------------------
SID (INT) | SNAME (VARCHAR) | CATNAME (INT REF) | QUESTION (INT REF)
-------------------

TABLE Categories
-------------------
CID INT | CATNAME VARCHAR
-------------------

TABLE Question
-------------------
QID INT | QUESTION VARCHAR
-------------------