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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T15:39:45+00:00

We allow commenting on our website (like a blog). Now we want to change

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We allow commenting on our website (like a blog). Now we want to change it so that people can comment other comments.

Our table looks something like this:

ID    |    CommentID    |    Comment     |    User     |     Date
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1001  |        1        |    Nice site   |     Me      |     20.01.2010
1001  |        2        |    Thx!        |     You     |     21.01.2010

I came up with two options:

1) Create a ParentCommentID and with that decide how the comments are listed from top to bottom.

2) Store the comment you’re commenting together with your own comment with some [QUOTE]-tags or something.

Any good tips to solving this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would go with a ParentCommentID that acts as a foreign key back to that table’s CommentID. That will enforce referential integrity, and you’ll avoid some duplication.

    If ten people quote a comment, it is replicated ten times with option 2. In option one, you only have ten FKs.

    The more characters you allow in a single comment, the more duplication you’ll have per quote with option 2.

    Option 1 also allows you to do more reporting. You can more easily query to find out which comments are quoted the most often.

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