Re: RDBMS question on coding "expanding series-like fields"

[Peter R. Wood - Mailing Lists]

Hi Warren,

What I personally would do is simply include some sort of 'ID' field.  In 
other words, each question would have a unique ID. Question 1's ID would be 
1, Question 2's ID would be 2, etc. Or however you wanted to number them.  
You could even set this up as an auto_increment and have the next number in 
sequence automatically generated when a new question is inserted into the 
database.

Then, if you want to call something "Question 1", in your programming 
language, simply prepend Question to the ID field. If I were doing this in 
Perl, for example, I would do:

print "Question " . $db_query_hash->{'id'}; 
#where $db_query_hash is the hash of field names and values returned from the 
#query, and 'id' is the field containing the id of the question. 

The above example would output "Question 1" if the ID selected from the 
database were 1.

The main point here is that putting a value like "Quest1" in a database is 
(in my opinion) redundant.  Simply make the name of the field "Question" and 
make the type of the field "num".

Of course I have not been using MySQL that long either, so perhaps some 
wizard will have a much smarter answer. :-)

Peter

On Tuesday 27 February 2001 11:24 am, you transmuted into bits these words:
> Hi!
>
> I have a Test Questions database.   Right now I have a hard-coded limit of
> 200 questions in it; I actually made a table with field names like Quest1,
> Quest2. . . Quest200.  However, I know that I am not using the power of
> MySql in setting it up this way.   This is more an example of my own
> ignorance than of the power of MySql!
>
> Can someone explain how to set up a table with a fieldname that 'expands'
> (maybe something like Quest[i] where "i" can be incremented as required).
> Is there more than one way of doing this?  Is there a place where I might
> see some sample code?
>
> I did look up 'enum' and 'set' in the manual but I don't feel confident
> with my grasp of the limited explanations given of these.   My feeling is
> that perhaps 'enum' would be a candidate for what I need, as 'set' has a
> limit on how big the set can get.    I would like to have the possibility
> of data expansion as needed.
>
> Any tips whatever would be appreciated!
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> Cheers!
>
> -Warren
>
>
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