Need advice modeling MySQL database

stroix

Well let me get straight to it...

We're planning to start a company that will provide software for Universities use. The software will programmed in PHP using MySQL as the database.

We would like to store the company's information, login, etc.. the heart of the software will be the information that is submitted by students. I am just not sure which database design l I should go with, please advice, it will be much appericiated.

This is what I have as of now:

Database: Customer_Name (University)
-- customer_information
---- name
---- address
---- city
---- zipcode
-- information_submitted_type1
-- information_submitted_type1

The above model created a separate database for each university. I am not sure if I should leave it as this or have one database and then the customers (university) inside of it and then their information within it.

Thanks once again!

roscor

There are many issues with designing your database, but ultimately it is purely self developmental as you alone can know of all the possible links within your Relational Database, the links, common attributes, specifics etc, the list is non-exhaustive.

First start off with a piece of paper and draw boxes for all your relevant main headings as you list above. Then link or not as the case may be to see how they integrate with each other. The main aim with databases is-
Do not replicate information in two tables. There are many many examples of this on the web

stroix

thanks for the link, it was very useful. =)

NogDog

You'll likely have a table for "customers", and one for "submitted information". The second table would include a field to hold a value pointing to a row in the customers table, typically an auto-incremented ID field used as the customers table primary key.