Is my database Scheme ok?

deker

I have recently been tasked with creating an online ordering system for our company. People will be able to upload photos, select how they want them finished, and then we print them out and send them to them, like www.ofoto.com does.

It's my first major programming project, so I wondered if someone would take a look at my database design and see if it is ok?

http://www.soktdesign.com/violet/DB%20Layout.htm

There is a link to it.

The main things I'm concerned with are how all the tables are related, like the customers with the orders, the images with the orders, etc.

For instance I've made it so that I have an orderID with each picture entry, so to find what pictures go with what order it will find all of the pictures with orderID of "xxxx". Is this a good way to do this? Or should I instead store a list of imageID's in a field of the orders table?

Thanks for any advice you can provide, I appreciate it!

ahundiak

I think your customer-order-image relations are ok.

Don't get too hung up on INT(x). They all end up getting stored internally as type integer .

deker

So you mean specifying a size (10) won't have much affect on anything?

I was just doing it because the PHP book I read said it will help keep the database fast if you specify sizes like that.

ahundiak

The size only impacts the display of data. So an INT(5) always returns at least 5 characters.

It's a very common misconception that INT(5) somehow will use less storage space than INT. Think about it. The number 99999 requires 17 bits to represent. Are computers really going to handle 17 bits differently than say the 20 bits required to represent 999999?

The mysql manual talks about this.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Numeric_types.html

Now there are things such as SMALLINT which will result in less data storage space. However, IMHO, it's not worth worrying about.

If your book says otherwise then I would suggest discarding it. An author that makes such a fundemental mistake has probably made other more serious mistakes as well.

deker

Ok thanks for the help. 🙂