Do I have this right?

[mastasparkle]

Just wondering if my planned layout of mysql database is optimal:

I have three tables:

A main table, which has a lot of data in a row. It has a usernumber field as its Primary. It has a username field set to Index. And a bunch of regular data fields.

In a score table (its a game) there is a username field set to Primary and a score field set to Index. This table is there so people can search the score list without needing to go through the main table.

In a challenge table (to challenge other users) there is a username field set to Primary and two Indexes for the two different ways to challenge people.

Is this optimized considering it will either have to search usernames (via the main table), scores, and two challenge types? Also, is it optimized if the program needs to look at one of the two side tables entries via the username?

Thanks in advance, this is my first usage of databases in a programming situation.

[edwardsbc]

Sound fine to me. Seems like you only need very simple joins on username to get all the data you need. Just make sure you keep username unique.

[dancahill]

It would work fine but I would tend to use the primary Key of the main table i.e. usernumber as the foreign key for the joins in the other 2 tables, this way it wouldn't matter if the usernames were not unique.

[ultraslacker]

Altho, for this app, usernames would have to be unique, as I suppose you are logging them in by that rather than usernumber. And not having it as key gives you a smaller index as well as allowing users to change usernames.

[mastasparkle]

Thanks everyone.