Hi,
I am designing a database.
It is going to store data from questionnaires.
The natural way seems to be to have a table - that stores where the data comes from, what is it about, what is the question and what is the answer, like this:
DataProviderID; FocusID; QuestionID; AnswerValue
My problem is that a Focus could be a eg. a Person, a Company or a Job - meaning that somebody may be giving info on an other person, on a Company or on a Job.
Now Persons, Companies and Jobs would have very different properties.
So how should I solve this shold I have a common table for Peoples, Companies and Jobs and use a very complicated structure of properties for them or should I store these entities in separate tables but than how will I store the results?
Thanks for your thoughts.
SWK
I am designing a database.
It is going to store data from questionnaires.
The natural way seems to be to have a table - that stores where the data comes from, what is it about, what is the question and what is the answer, like this:
DataProviderID; FocusID; QuestionID; AnswerValue
My problem is that a Focus could be a eg. a Person, a Company or a Job - meaning that somebody may be giving info on an other person, on a Company or on a Job.
Now Persons, Companies and Jobs would have very different properties.
So how should I solve this shold I have a common table for Peoples, Companies and Jobs and use a very complicated structure of properties for them or should I store these entities in separate tables but than how will I store the results?
Thanks for your thoughts.
SWK