Mal1 Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 Should be a fairly simple question. I want to set up a fairly simple database with company information (name, email contact etc.) and the category or categories they serve. Companies in the table may be associated to one category or may be associated with 3 or 4. Should I make another table for categories (and if so how would keys be set?) or just have it in the one table? Having a programmer link it all up and stuff, it's not my area, but would like to just have the tables set up and ready. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273634-best-way-to-set-up-tables-when-multiple-values/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barand Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 I gave an answer to a very similar question earlier http://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273616-insert-multiple-values-into-database/?do=findComment&comment=1408132 Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273634-best-way-to-set-up-tables-when-multiple-values/#findComment-1408144 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal1 Posted January 25, 2013 Author Share Posted January 25, 2013 (edited) I gave an answer to a very similar question earlier http://forums.phpfre...e/#entry1408132 I seen that thanks... so the categories table would I just have one row for id (what kind of key should I make id on this table and the id on the business table?) and one row for category? My business table looks like this: id smallint(6) auto_increment business varchar(50) contact varchar(50) email varchar(100) phone varchar(20) address varchar(125) city varchar(20) postcode varchar(20) description text Also, the collation seems to default at "latin1_general_ci" is this normal/ok/matter? Edited January 25, 2013 by Mal1 Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273634-best-way-to-set-up-tables-when-multiple-values/#findComment-1408159 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal1 Posted January 25, 2013 Author Share Posted January 25, 2013 Should there be for the categories table: id business id (linked with id on the business table) category or just: id category Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273634-best-way-to-set-up-tables-when-multiple-values/#findComment-1408164 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barand Posted January 25, 2013 Share Posted January 25, 2013 You would have 3 tables Business table (as now) : PK = id Category : id, cat_name . (PK = id) Businesscategory : business_id, cat_id (PK=business_id, cat_id) The third table is the link table between the business and category tables Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273634-best-way-to-set-up-tables-when-multiple-values/#findComment-1408242 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christian F. Posted January 26, 2013 Share Posted January 26, 2013 I recommend looking up on "Database normalization", starting with this video series: It should help explain how to properly design a database, or at least get you started on it. As for the collation/charset: Latin1 works, but UTF-8 is recommended as it allows you to store any character without jumping through hoops. Quote Link to comment https://forums.phpfreaks.com/topic/273634-best-way-to-set-up-tables-when-multiple-values/#findComment-1408360 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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