Member Avatar for jinx_uk_98

Hi,

I'm creating a web database as a bit of learning project.

In short it's going to a on-line menu viewer, where people can upload (type in) their food/takeaway food menus.

The problem I'm having is with the design and as each outlet can have a differing number of starters/mains/deserts etc..

inital thoughts were:

Menus
------
Menu_id
Menu_outlet
Starter1
Starter2
Starter3
Starter4
etc...

but what if an outlet has more that 4 starters?

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

thanks jinx

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Member Avatar for bcasp

Do some research on normalization.

You might want to consider a simple setup where you have three tables.

Menu
MenuID (Primary Key)
MenuOutlet

Starter
StarterID (Primary Key)
StarterDescription

MenuStarter
MenuID (Primary Key - 1)
StarterID (Primary Key - 2)

This setup allows you to have as many starters as you want for each menu. The MenuStarter table would just use a concatenated primary key that could link those two tables. Hope this makes sense...

Again, some research on normalization would probably help.

Member Avatar for trudge

bcasp is pointing you in the right direction. As a further enlightenment, any time you ask yourself the question 'what if column X has more than Y choices' is an indication that that column should be broken out into a separate table.

Member Avatar for jinx_uk_98

thats great guys, many thanks

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