Home/ Questions/Q 1068587
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-16T20:18:24+00:00

Two tables in my database are as follows: [Employee] Table: Id (Primary Key, Autoincrement)

  • 0

Two tables in my database are as follows:

[Employee] Table:
 Id (Primary Key, Autoincrement)
 FirstName
 LastName
 Status

[Status] Table:
 Status (Primary Key)

Status is one of the following: “FullTime” “Contractor” “Terminated”

How should [Employee].Status reference [Status].Status as foreign key? I see two ways of doing this:

  1. [Employee].Status points directly to [Status].Status
  2. I add an Id column to [Status] table and make it PK/Autoincrement. Then [Employee].Status points to [Status].Id. This means I have to do a join in order to get the status text.

Other tables may also reference the Status table. Is one of the two methods the ‘correct’ way of doing things or are both a matter of design?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    It’s basically a matter of design, but it’s generally better to add an ID field to the Status table. This allows you to make changes to the Status values (spelling corrections, language translation, change of term to clarify meaning, etc) without having to update the data in the tables that reference it.

    Also, if you link to the string field, then the linking field needs enough space to store the longest status string. Linking to the ID means you just have to store an integer (or at worst, a GUID) in the linking field.

    • 0