"Geocrawler.com" wrote:
>
> This message was sent from Geocrawler.com by "Rich" <rklein@stripped>
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>
> I am creating a database to enable users to store a variety of their preferences as
> well as storing various search results to build a MyFavorites section for the site. The
> data will be retrieved used PHP3.
>
> Situation:
> ========
> Users enter various search criteria and the database returns all relevant vendor
> names. The users can then click a check-box next to the vendor name to save it in
> "MyFavorites".
>
> Question:
> ========
> Is it better to store the favorites in one field of the USER table as a concatenated
> list of store id's (i.e. 1111:1235:54320:1257) and parse the list when retrieving or
> should the database be normalized by creating a composite table for the two entities?
>
> Thanks for any suggestions.....
>
> Richard
>
> Geocrawler.com - The Knowledge Archive
>
You should normalize. I cannot think of a situation when it would not be
good to normalize, can anyone ?
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Sasha Pachev
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http://www.direct1.com/ (work)
