Database Design

Questions about the MySQL, PostgreSQL, and most other databases, as well as using it with PHP can be asked here.

Moderator: General Moderators

User avatar
RobertGonzalez
Site Administrator
Posts: 14293
Joined: Tue Sep 09, 2003 6:04 pm
Location: Fremont, CA, USA

Post by RobertGonzalez »

TheMoose wrote:You can easily create a code-based "relational" table of sorts, which unfortunately my boss tends to do with things. You have a column in the table that is text (for longer length), and you just put each of the class IDs in that column and separate them with a character. In the code you can then just parse those IDs and go from there. But I HIGHLY stress that you don't ever do this unless in extreme cases. It's very poor design.
Your boss saves relationships as strings within a column in an RDBMS? Wow, that is silly. I tried that once, posted a question about it here and had about 10 regulars post back with a recommendation NOT to do that. After a discussion I realized that doing something that way complete defeats the purpose of the R in the RDBMS and make updating relationships a living nightmare later on.
Post Reply