Re: SQL Table Design

[Booth Martin <booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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
>