I am trying to develop a scheduler- and calendar-dependent event application in C#, for which a crucial requirement is to represent recurring events in the database. What is the best way to represent recurring events in a database? More Details: While creating the event I am also sending invites to the certain users and the invitees sh...
I am working on an app right now which has the potential to grow quite large. The whole application runs through a single domain, with customers being given sub-domains, which means that it all, of course, runs through a common code-base. What I am struggling with is the database design. I am not sure if it would be better to have a c...
I am currently setting up Open ID authentication in my website and I am having troubles incorporating it with my current Login System and database... I've read the article at Plaxo & it recommends this type of table to store the openid info... create table user_openids ( openid_url varchar(255) not null, primary key (openid_url), ...
I am trying to setup a contacts database for mailings and I am trying to fully automate the labels but can't figure out how. Where in the database would I store the name that would appear on the top of a mailing label: mr & mrs joe thomson dr. and mrs james berry Schwartz family This seems like it would have to be a calculated field...
2 part question: 1st What is the best way to setup a table/relationship structure given the following scenario: I have many tables that store different kinds of data (ie: books, movies, magazine - each as different tables) and then one table that stores reviews that can link to any of the table types. So a row in the review table can ...
Here is my situation: I have about 50 different fields of data that I need to store for 1 record (none are the same or repeating). About 15 of the fields are ones that I commonly need to use in queries, while the remainder are used on occasion (~40% of the queries). Should I setup 2 tables, one containing the common fields and the other...
I'm trying to build an app that will take a real estate MLS(Multiple Listing Service) data from a CSV and insert it into the database. I have the CSV parsing taken care of but I'm having trouble making the database efficient. The problem is that the MLS data providers are known to change the format of the property elements quickly withou...
(Sorry about the vagueness of the title; I can't think how to really say what I'm looking for without writing a book.) So in our app, we allow users to change key pieces of data. I'm keeping records of who changed what when in a log schema, but now the problem presents itself: how do I best represent that data in a view for reporting? ...
I am designing a basic inventory system for a vendor. They have many different product categories. Each product category has many different properties. A - x1, x2, x3, a1, a2, a3; B - x1, x2, x3, b1, b2, b3, b4; C - x1, x2, x3, c1, c2; Laptop - Make, Price, Quantity, Processor, OS, Hard drive, Memory, Video Card etc Monitor - Make...
We have two tables, ActivityForm and Field which are given a many-to-many relationship via the ActivityFormField table. The ActivityFormFieldValidator table will have a many-to-one relationship with the ActivityFormField table, so we are giving the ActivityFormField table an identity column ("ActivityFormFieldId"). The ActivityFormFiel...
I have this situation: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1590033/mysql-newbie-question-which-are-the-pk-and-the-fk-for-this-tables (take a look at the table Salaries) How do you create a table with multiple primary keys? create table salaries ( dep_id smallint auto_increment primary key, emp_id smallint auto_increment primary ke...
I'm building a desktop application that will run on multiple laptops. It will need to sync up to a central database whenever the user is back in the office and has access again. My biggest problem to overcome is how to design the database so that it is easily synced with the central database server. One of the major hurdles is trying t...
I work in a call centre that uses single table Access database for its calling, which I moved to a SQL server based system. There's a data list table (not normalized) and a calls table. This has about one update per second currently. All call outcomes along with date, time, and agent id are stored in the calls table. Agents have a predef...
I'm creating a discussion forum (of sorts) in ASP.NET MVC, and I have a requirement to allow posts by unregistered visitors. Visitors only need to specify an alias to post, and can optionally provide an e-mail address and a website url. What's the best practice in handling posts by unregistered users in a database? I'm a bit of a newb...
I'm planning a programming project, but am an unexperienced programmer. Aside from a couple of intro courses in C and Java long ago, I know little about programming, except that I know what I want the end point of the project to look like Without getting too specific, what I want to do is this: Create a website where users can regist...
Does anybody have any recommendations for handling company assets? Servers, switches, telephones, monitors, desks, Blackberrys, software, etc. How would you design a database to handle these different types of assets without being too vague or too precise in the database design? For instance, if I have a field for the physical asset tag...
Hi, We are building a set of features for our application. One of which is a list of recent user activities ala on SO. I'm having a little problem finding the best way to design the table for these activities. Currently we have an Activities table with the following columns UserId (Id of the user the activity is for) Type (Type of ac...
I played a web game a while back called racewarkingdoms. It used a 2d text based system. What interest me is the map. The map is made up of 255 tiles in X direction, and 255 in Y direction. There are 5 of these maps total. But what is amazing is that each one contains so much data. Each one contains its own 'kingdom' which would be...
I need to store a large table (several millions or rows) that contains a large number of user-defined fields (not known at compile time, but probably around 20 to 40 custom fields). It is very important (performance-wise) for me to be able to query the data based on those custom fields: i.e. "Select the rows where this attribute has that...
In the past, I've used Visio (2003 Professional, if it matters) to doodle database diagrams while we're in the conceptual design phase. This is pretty painful, though, because there's no good way to get the data out of Visio (though this answer gives me hope of a temporary analgesic). Since the designs are generally pretty small, that pa...