[!--quoteo(post=371671:date=May 5 2006, 02:51 PM:name=fenway)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(fenway @ May 5 2006, 02:51 PM) [snapback]371671[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--] That's the wrong way to think about it -- you only need two tables, recipes & categories. That relationship is simple; then, simply store a parent_category_id in the categories table, and have the top-level ones have a NULL parent. That's it. [/quote] yes ,but then you would have repeating parent_category_id field values for all recipes that belong to same category, and that way it would be hard to maintain database in future..