* Scott Haneda > What would be a good way to deal with the following... > > I have a form that has 5 checkboxes on it, lets say the > checkboxes are for categories, and more than one can be > selected. > > For example: > please tell is what brochure you want > [] car > [] boat > [] truck > [] SUV > [] beetle > > I have been asked to provide statistics on how many total form > submissions there are per month. This part seems pretty simple, > I just add a new record every time the form is sent. > > They also want to know stats on which categories were picked as > well. I don't know if I should create one table to store just > the fact that a form has been posted, and then another to store > the 5 above values. > > I don't see the 5 categories being changed, so I could create 5 > fields in one table, and tally them that way, or I could create > one field and put the actual value in that field and tally them > that way. > > Any suggestions are appreciated.
Consider the SET column type: <URL: http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/SET.html > There are at two nice things SET provides: 1) the compact storing, you would pack all five checkboxes in a single byte, and 2) you can use binary operations. The downside is you can't index on a SET column efficiently, or more accurately: mysql can't use the index when you use binary operators or the LIKE operator with "%" as the first character. But that's probably not relevant in your case. -- Roger -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
