NotSoRandomOne
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- Sep 15, 2009
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This is hopefully a quick question for those more knowledgeable than me. Say I am creating an information DB with 'Topics' and 'Subtopics'. A straightforward approach is one which has a Topics table, and another Subtopics table, with the subtopics being linked to the topics by their ID.
Can this be designed flexibly, so that a user can easily post information to a topic, rather than being forced to have a subtopic for everything? For instance, if I create a 'History' topic, instead of being forced to choose the subtopic 'Greek' or 'Roman' to apply an 'Information' item to, I can apply it directly to the 'History' main topic?
I can see doing it by eliminating the subtopics table, and just creating a 'History' item in the Topics table, and another 'History, Greek', etc. But that way means long dropdowns for all topics, and it also makes it difficult to query by master topics.
I can kinda see a way to do this using calculated tables to hold IDs for all Topic/Subtopic combinations, which I would have to update every time I added a topic or a subtopic, but that way QUICKLY becomes very complicated.
Is here something I'm overlooking that simplifies this type of design?
Thanks!
David
Can this be designed flexibly, so that a user can easily post information to a topic, rather than being forced to have a subtopic for everything? For instance, if I create a 'History' topic, instead of being forced to choose the subtopic 'Greek' or 'Roman' to apply an 'Information' item to, I can apply it directly to the 'History' main topic?
I can see doing it by eliminating the subtopics table, and just creating a 'History' item in the Topics table, and another 'History, Greek', etc. But that way means long dropdowns for all topics, and it also makes it difficult to query by master topics.
I can kinda see a way to do this using calculated tables to hold IDs for all Topic/Subtopic combinations, which I would have to update every time I added a topic or a subtopic, but that way QUICKLY becomes very complicated.
Is here something I'm overlooking that simplifies this type of design?
Thanks!
David