Question

Suppose I have a table Articles. An article can have only one topic attached to it. But it is also possible that article has no topic.

1. Should I make topic a new column in Articles table? OR

2. Should I create a table topics2articles and map together a topic with article?
   (In this case I do not have to add extra column for Articles table.

I don’t like the 1st solution because then some rows will have NULL in them? Or is this reasonable to have NULL in this case?

What do you think?

Thanks, Boda Cydo.

Answer 1

I don’t see any reason for you to make a new table just to avoid having rows with NULL in them.

It would make sense to add it to the article table, and probably make it easier to maintain since you wouldn’t have to join against another table.