To comma delimit or not, that is the question

[betheball]

Not sure the best place to post this, so I'll try here. Feel free to move it if needed. I have a .asp form that includes a dropdown menu that allows multiple selections. The dropdown is populated by a table in an Access db. So, when a user makes his/her choices I will send the user's ID and the ID number of each choice to another table. Here is the question. Is it better to create one new record with the user's ID and then all choices grouped as a comma-delimited string or would it be better to create a new record for each choice?

If I choose the latter, how would I then query the db so that I can display to the user the text label of his/her choices, not the ID numbers? In other words, a typical record would be something like:

UserID = 25 - Choices = 1,7,11,19

I would want to display to the user something like Hello User 25, your choices were:

red
yellow
blue
green

Thoughts?

 

[WayneRyan]

betheball,

Not enough info here, but here's my thoughts:

Many entries into a seperate table -

DateOrSessionID UserID Choice1
DateOrSessionID UserID Choice2
DateOrSessionID UserID Choice3
.
.
.
DateOrSessionID UserID ChoiceN

Then with a query, you can join the tables based on
the choices.


Inserting only one record (comma delimited or not)
is too limiting.

Wayne

 

[betheball]

Thanks Wayne. That was my inclination as well.