How to setup database tables with multiple similar attributes

Question

There are products, sections and attributes.

Each attribute can have up to 5 or 6 options.

Example: Power

10 Volt
15 Volt
20 Volt

And there are about 10 products in total, each product has up to 17 attributes applied to it.

Example: Product 1

power - 10 volt
color - red, yellow
link - online, offline

How would you setup the tables? Im stumped. I was thinking of having a separate table for each attrubute, then a products table and sections table.

The products table would house foreign keys for the attributes that relate to it and sections. Does this make sense?

Answer 1

I was thinking of having a separate table for each attrubute,

Don't create a separate table for each attribute, this won't server your purpose.

Create separate tables for each of the products, sections and attributes and join them accordingly using PKs and FKs.

Answer 2

This is quite common. You can have a base product table with some general attributes like...

Product
-------
ProductID
ProductName 
Description
Price

Then you can extend the table for different product types. So you could have a table like

ProductElectrical 
-----------------
ProductID
Voltage
Watts
BatterySize

Or...

ProductApparel
---------------
ProductID
Color
Size
Material

Then when needed you can join the extension tables to the core product table like this...

select p.ProductID, p.ProductName, p.Description, pa.Color, pa.Size, pa.Material
from Product p
join ProductApparel pa
on pa.ProductID = p.ProductID
where pa.Size = "XXL"

This way you can have a compact core product table used throughout your system. When you need to see the extra attributes you can easily join them to the core Product table.