Hi, we have a database where users sign up to one program of several (eg. in the user table there is a field prog_id referencing the auto_increment key of the program table) The program table holds a multitude of information (text, varchar, decimal, int, date fields) For some users they need a customised program - where one (or possibly a few) of the fields in program need to be uniq for that user. But by far the majority of users use a generic program What is the best way of handling this? Up to now we have been creating a separate entry for each of these users in a table called custom_program (the same field structure as program) and populating this. However it gets difficult to maintain. We have thought of just putting the changed fields into custom_program but this complicates selects (eg. if the non changed fields are NULL we need to select * from custom_program where user=x and then loop through each field and if it is not null we modify the value we've previously taken from program. The other idea I had was to create a table CREATE TABLE overrides ( user varchar(10) NOT NULL, field_name varchar(30), field_value varchar(30) ) TYPE=MyISAM PACK_KEYS=1; and then select field_name, field_value from overrides where user=x and loop through each over-ride. This seems a bit of a cludge because the different fields are really different types (text, varchar, decimal, int, date fields). Anyone got a clever way of dealing with this? /Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
