how many tables

elskan

I am designing an e commerce site that sells campoing equipment and accessories.

Can you give me some idea of good practise when it comes to the database.

Is it better to have all of the products in one table or have multiple tables for each maunfacturer.

I would like to include a search function that uses the database, can I search over multiple tables

I would also like to edit the records once in the table. Would I need to make the fields TINYTEXT to do this.

Thanks in advance

Traduim

The best is to have a table called products for products, a table called manufacturers for manufacturers, and so on.

Later, if you need to link each product to one, and only one, manufacturer. Add the field id_manufacturer to products.

If you need to link some products with some manufacturers, or a product can be linked to several manufacturers, then create a new table called products_manufacturers where you'll relate id_product and id_manufacturer.

jassh

just a suggestion...

perhaps you wanna make a table 'produts', and then you can fill in diffrent products.. (and the product got a single id, perhaps)

imho, to edit record..
as far as i know.. (thru a beginner's point of view..) any sort of record can be edited..
be it a varchar.. or text.. etc..

but i think in some special cases..
you need to have a certain format to edit a certain type of record..,
example, you cant simply just edit directly to a md5 encryption type of record..
but you can change it though
(you maybe have to re-encrypt it back)

just an opinion..

cheers;
-jassh

Sxooter

Just to add to what's here already, the schema of a database should be such that you don't have to alter it, in general, due to normal operation. Having a table for each product or manufacturer would break that rule, and require you to create tables on the fly as you add one or the other.

The second rule is that you should only store things once if possible. i.e. if you are gonna have a table where you reference the same company over and over, don't put all the company data over and over in that table, make a table to hold the company data and put the id from that row into the table that references it over and over. This is called normalization. There's lots of text on it both on the web and in dead tree format.