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QuestionDatabase design suggestions/feedback/pointers wanted Pin
Alsvha11-Mar-07 1:45
Alsvha11-Mar-07 1:45 
Hiya all.

I'm currently trying to find some sources/feedback upon various methods of designing a database.
Up to now, the database design I've been working with have been relatively simple and thus not so difficult in modeling, but now I think I'll be faced with a more difficult project and thus am trying to find some inspiration.

If I have to map a large amount of products to a database, and each product can have a (large) amount of various attributes across multiple languages. The attributes for one product might not all be used for any other product and vice versa - so I'm ponding what would be the best way of doing this.

To simplify:
Supposed we have product X and Y and Z.
Product X have attributes A, B, C
Product Y have attributes D, E, F
Product Z have attributes A, B, F

Now multiply this up with a factor 50 per attribute and thousands of products over various languages and markets and we get the scope.

Now, how I usually handle attributes is to normalise them out into a seperate table and use a connection table for the value, so I have a table for product, attribute and attribute value entity with a key from the product and attribute.
Pretty standard I think....

However, with a scope like this, we'd be looking at a big table of attributes, products and then subsequently a very big table of values. This would/could seriously hamper the lookup times from the database.

An alternative method I could think off would be to make some sort of dynamic table creation, so each product when created, got a table assigned to itself with the attributes.
So I'd have a product table, and for each of these a currentProduct_attribute table which would contain all the values. This would provide a faster lookup, from what I can see at the expense of a very large number of tables and various administrative problems if a product is to be move/deleted etc.

Another alternative could be to integrate the attributes into the product table with additional fields there. It would however cause huge product table with many unused fields in each row. Alternative one could sort of "bitmap" the attributes in the product table.

Does anybody have any feedback or pointers - or possible references (please, if possible) I could take with me in my considerations?

I've tried googeling my problem, but it is difficult finding something concrete and some relevant keywords to search for.

Thanks in advance.

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127.0.0.1 - Sweet 127.0.0.1

AnswerRe: Database design suggestions/feedback/pointers wanted Pin
#12311-Mar-07 10:59
#12311-Mar-07 10:59 
GeneralRe: Database design suggestions/feedback/pointers wanted Pin
Alsvha11-Mar-07 21:27
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GeneralRe: Database design suggestions/feedback/pointers wanted Pin
#12311-Mar-07 22:37
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GeneralRe: Database design suggestions/feedback/pointers wanted Pin
Alsvha11-Mar-07 23:02
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#12311-Mar-07 23:12
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GeneralRe: Database design suggestions/feedback/pointers wanted Pin
Alsvha11-Mar-07 22:28
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QuestionStore an encryption key Pin
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Questionhow to design a "setting" module in a software? Pin
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QuestionOLAP Design Pin
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