I think I've got most of the basics of MySQL under
control now, and I'd like to ask a question about
formatting table data. I've learned to insert html in
my tables. For example, the following cell includes
the code for proper apostrophes and quotation marks:
<em>Land of the Midnight Sun</em>, <em>The Last
Frontier</em>, and <em>The Great Land </em> have
replaced Seward’s Folly and <em>Seward’s
Ice Box</em>
But my question regards differentiating between
narrative descriptions and pure data. The example
above is what I might call a narrative account. If I
wanted to focus on just state nicknames alone, I might
make table cells, each with its own entry:
1. Land of the Midnight Sun
2. The Last Frontier
3. The Great Land
4. Seward's Folly
5. Seward's Ice Box
But that gets confusing, too, because some states have
just one nickname and would therefore require a single
column, versus five fields for Alaska.
So, suppose I want to have my data available in two
formats - the "narrative form" I offered in the first
example, and pure data that I can sort alphabetically
and manipulate in other ways. What's the best strategy
for doing this?
Should I make two fields - one for the narrative, and
another with values separated by commas...
The Great Land, Land of the Midnight Sun, Seward's
Folly
Or is there a way to dump all your data into one cell,
then choose between displaying everything in that cell
and just displaying (and manipulating) isolated bits
of data?
Thanks.
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