Storing Multiple Dates

[Anon]

This is more of an overview type question - how do you handle storing multiple dates?

One of the applications I was asked to write here at work was a training calendar. So the people in charge of training could put in "Class XYZ" on 10-1-2001, 10-5-2001, 10-20-2001, and so on. I ended up making just one field in the DB for date, converting each date entered to a timestamp, compressing all the timestamps into a string separated by "::" then when they need to edit it explodes the string into an array and they edit it that way.

What I'd like to know is.........is there a better way? I'm not to keen on what I did here.

TIA!

[amcgrath]

have a course table (course_id,course_name) and a course_date table (course_id,start_date,end_date)...

then a select course.course_name,course_date.start_date,course_date.end_date from course,course_date where course.course_id = course_date.course_id query will give you what you want.

Putting multiple values in one field is a very bad practice and habit to get into...