How to display this database table?

[kanuj]

This is the db table structure I've with me:

id | time | file1 | design1 | process1 | color1| finish1 | file2 | design2 | process2 | color2 | finish2 | file3 | design3 | process3 | color3 | finish3 | comments

file1, file2 and file3 are the names of the files the users have uploaded. The users have the option to upload upto 3 files, and their associated info gets stored in the db. Now, I've to project this info in a table of this form:

| Username | Name | Company | File | Upload Date | Elapsed Time

What i mean is, if a user has uploaded file1, it would occupy one row in the above table. If he has uploaded file2, that'd be another row, and so on till his files are complete. Then on to the other user... # is his id in the db, username and time i can get, its the file colum that's giving me problems. Any suggestions?

[laserlight]

Sounds like you might want to read up on Database Normalization And Design Techniques.

[kanuj]

I decided to cut out the complexity and went with three seperate tables for the three files. So each of my three file tables looks like this:

id | fname | lname | company | email | time | file | design | process | color | finish* | comments

I know a UNION must be done to grab the values of these three tables and display them in the order i want. I'm failing with the query, and also how do i display the UNION created table?

[Weedpacket]

No, you really will want to normalise the database schema. You think it's complicated? It's only as complicated as the data.

Trust me; people have been building databases for decades and why not take advantage of what they've learned.? As Feynman's Other Dictum says: "Your way is always better until something goes wrong".