[thelist] DB Schema Design

Ian Anderson ian at zstudio.co.uk
Sun May 7 09:43:15 CDT 2006


Hershel Robinson wrote:
> The plan that the other designer has is to use one table called statuses 
> with three fields: id, name, class. This one table will be used for all 
> statuses in the system. The name field will be the name of the status 
> (on hold, active, shipped, factory, etc.) and the class field will hold 
> for what type of object this status is relevant. So 'on hold' and 
> 'active' might be relevant for products and 'shipped' and 'factory' 
> might be relevant for orders.

Eeyuch... I'm afraid I think the single statuses table is misguided. I 
think you can have a common status table where you have a consistent set 
of values for each class of entity to which it relates, but you don't.

Because you're acknowledging that - for instance - customers can't be 
shipped, I think you've basically answered your own question. You need 
different status tables for each class of entity.

Also, I think you have to ask: if you have separate tables with entities 
so similar that they share a single set of statuses, why are they in 
separate tables?

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ian



-- 
zStudio - Web development and accessibility
- http://zStudio.co.uk
Snippetz.net - Your personal, private code library
- http://snippetz.net




More information about the thelist mailing list