Re: SQL Table Design -- MIDRANGE-L

× The internal search function is temporarily non-functional. The current search engine is no longer viable and we are researching alternatives.
As a stop gap measure, we are using Google's custom search engine service.
If you know of an easy to use, open source, search engine ... please contact support@midrange.com.

Would something like this work?

3 columns.
* Category_Parent
* Category_Child
* Category

If the Parent is blank, that is the head of the family
If the Child is empty, that is the foot of the family.

Adding a new subcategory is simply a matter of maintaining the last record in the chain. Inserting a new category into the chain is nearly as easy.

This allows there to be as many subcategories as one could ever need, from none to a gazillion.

James Perkins wrote:

Hello All,
I'm in the process of creating a table to store a category and a
subcategory. It's possible for there to be multiple levels of this
structure, e.g. a subcategory may have another subcategory.

One of my co-workers suggested we just make a table with 10 category
columns. I don't think I really like this idea, it seems to like "old"
database design. With a recursive SQL statement I can go up or down to find
the category hierarchy. To me this seems much more scalable.

So my question is, how are others handling this?

Thanks in advance,
--
James R. Perkins
http://twitter.com/the_jamezp

This mailing list archive is Copyright 1997-2024 by midrange.com and David Gibbs as a compilation work. Use of the archive is restricted to research of a business or technical nature. Any other uses are prohibited. Full details are available on our policy page. If you have questions about this, please contact [javascript protected email address].

Operating expenses for this site are earned using the Amazon Associate program and Google Adsense.