PHP & MySQL Tickers..Is this standard practice?

Question

I currently have about 4 different database tables which output to html tables. Each of these tables uses a count query to calculate data from a 5th table.

That's no problem, but what about when I want to sort and order the data, and paginate etc (like with zend). If it were a one page table, I could probably sort an array.

My thought was, to use a ticker. But that would require a new column in all 4 tables and seems like overkill or like there could be a better way.

Sadly, I can't find much info on it (likely because I don't know what to search for).

Advice?

..and please take it easy, I'm new and learning.

Answer 1

Assuming youre using Zend_Db_Table_Row and that you dont need to persist any modifications you might make to these rowsets then you can just append the virtual columns to the row object and have them be accessible via array notation. So if youre doing it all in one query now just use that same query, and the column should be there.

OTOH, if youre using a Data Mapper pattern then simply adjust your hydration to look for this "virtual column" and hydrate it if it exists in the result data. Then in your getter for this property have it see if the property is null or some other negative specification, and if it is, to execute a calculation query on that single object or return the already calculated result.