Database Structure

[leeschill]

Hi all ,

I am hoping for some guidance in structuring my database. I am having a hard time imagining/picturing how this would work without creating thousands of database tables in the system.

 

I am looking to build a membership system where USERS can log in and name their price on services from multiple SERVICE PROVIDERS. All is closed bidding. I would then like the SERVICE PROVIDERS to log in and view their bids and be able to hit a REJECT or ACCEPT button that the USERS can then relog in and see. There would be hundreds of service providers in each state. I\'ve looked at the Membership Tutorial and have started on some of the work but can\'t figure out how this will work without creating thousands of tables.

 

Any ideas or thoughts that I can feed off of? :shock:

 

Well maybe have different privileges set up so one table could be viewed by both but only give write privileges to the Service Provider??

[DylanBlitz]

you wouldn\'t really need that many tables

 

A very basic layout but you could try something like this

 

Users

user_id

username

 

Services

service_id

provider_id

service_desc

service_price

 

bids

bid_id

bidder_id

service_id

bid_price

 

 

Like I said, very basic but you get the idea?

 

then when the service provider logs in you just select the services with their provider_id (which would be their user id) and the bids that deal with their service id\'s. That way they only see their services and bids.

[leeschill]

I think I understand. Thanks for the reply.

[gizmola]

DylanBlitz had some good thinking but he didn\'t really make clear that either you need a seperate provider table (and this would be where the provider would indicate their location (state/zip etc), or you could use Users for that, and have an attribute of that table that would indicate whether the user was a a user or a provider.

 

I would recommend that you might want to retain the services of an experienced developer who understands data modelling and can help you make sure you have the right database structure.