hey everyone..
here is my question... when you are designing a relational database you have many different relations, is it better to assign a table to each 'type' of relation or to create a master relational table where all relations are defined.
For example:
rtbl_bananas_oranges
rtbl_bananas_pears
in contrast to:
rtbl_relations.. containing the columns
id(primarykey) .. object1_id.. object2_id
then go into object_id table and see what type it is..
....
the reason I ask is it gets tedious to keep track of an object ID's as well as its type ..
hopefully this makes sense, Im going crazy trying to figure out how to implement this..
Andrew
Database Design & Relational tables
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- feyd
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Separate tables for each relation is the easiest to maintain, despite looking unwieldy. Unless you are prepared to live with the added logic you would need to use for the combined variant, I would go with separate tables.
Provided you have the right abstraction level in classes little of your application level code would need changing, if any, to do either.
Provided you have the right abstraction level in classes little of your application level code would need changing, if any, to do either.