It's pretty simple, really. This is a simplified version of how we store our entities in contact manager which can be nested n levels deep.
dbo.enity --------- entity_id PK entity_name entity_type_id FK (entity_type.entity_type_id) entity_id_parent FK (entity.entity_id) dbo.entity_type --------------- entity_type_id PK entity_type_name The entity_type table stores all the possible types (company, department, employee) and we store the corresponding id in the entity table for normalization. If you were view your data as a hierarchy, each node would be represented by a record in the entity table where each record's entity_id_parent value was the entity_id of it's parent record. Does that make sense? I'm not entirely sure what you are storing, but it sounds like you want to nest records in a hierarchy and have large amount of flexibility without having to have a table for each level. ~Brad -----Original Message----- From: Will Tomlinson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 04, 2007 7:55 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: How best to represent this hierarchy of data Brad, Could you please show me the table structure laid out like I showed mine? HAvin a hard time wrappin my head round what you're saying. Thanks much! Will ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 The most significant release in over 10 years. Upgrade & see new features. http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion?sdid=RVJR Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:280061 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
