MySQL creating a database table query - mysql

Question

I want to create a join table between two or more tables.
The tables are Student, and course.
Join table will be enrolled.
the business rule is that a student can only enroll in one course at a time.
I want to prevent a user from creating additional enrollments after making 1 enrollment in a course.
I am not sure what type of contraint this will be, or if its even possible.
Can anyone help?
thank you
note: I dont think it is possible to create a Primary key as the primary key of another table, ie the studentID of the student table. If i could I would. breaks the rules i think. This would be a foreign key which is not unique.
If the business rule should be ignored, and assume that a student naturally will only enroll in one course at a time.. maybe ill stop worrying...

Answer 1

You could create a unique index for the id_student but this provably will bring problems if a student try to register in other course later. You shoud include the id_course into the unique constraint.
ALTER TABLE table_name ADD CONSTRAINT constraint_name UNIQUE(studentId, course_id)
Other solution could be creating a Trigger.
The trigger should be a "before insert" trigger. This one should serch for information related to the student in the table, if the table doesn´t has information then insert information, else do nothing.
CREATE TRIGGER 'ONE_STUDENT_PER_COURSE'
BEFORE INSERT ON 'Enrollments'
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
DECLARE student_id INT;
SELECT n.id_student INTO student_id
FROM table_enrollments n
`IF student_id IS NULL THEN
/* I DON´T REALLY KNOW EXACTLY THE SINTAXIS FOR INSERTING DATA OF THE BEFORE INSERT FOR YOU VERSION OF MYSQL
BUT TRY THIS ONE
*/
INSERT INTO table_enrollments (student_id, course_id) SELECT student_id, course_id FROM inserted
END IF;
END; $$`

Answer 2

You can create unique index in join table.
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX index_name
ON your_join_table (studentId);

Answer 3

Each table can have a primary key. Two tables can have the same primary key defined. (But the implementation depends on the Entity Relationship Model, what we've discovered about the entities and relationships between the entities.
Based on the information provided in the question, a possible implementation of an enrollment table:
CREATE TABLE current_enrollment
( student_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL COMMENT 'pk, fk ref student.id'
, course_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL COMMENT 'pk, fk ref course.id'
, PRIMARY KEY (student_id, course_id)
, CONSTRAINT FK_currrent_enrollment_student FOREIGN KEY ( student_id )
REFERENCES student (id) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE RESTRICT
, CONSTRAINT FK_currrent_enrollment_course FOREIGN KEY ( course_id )
REFERENCES course (id) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE RESTRICT
)
The datatypes of the foreign key columns must match the datatypes of the referenced columns; in this example, i've assumed primary key columns id in both student and course, defined as datatype INT UNSIGNED
In this example, the PRIMARY KEY constraint enforces a unique constraint on the combination of (student_id,course_id). An attempt to insert a second enrollment (same student in the same course) would be a duplicate row, and that would throw a constraint violation, preventing the row from being added.
If enrollment turns out to be an entity in the model, with its own attributes, I'd opt to add a separate id column as a surrogate primary key, with a unique constraint on (student_id,course_id)
CREATE TABLE current_enrollment
( id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL COMMENT 'pk'
, student_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL COMMENT 'fk ref student.id'
, course_id INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL COMMENT 'fk ref course.id'
, enrollment_dt DATETIME
, status VARCHAR(8)
, approval_by VARCHAR(8)
, PRIMARY KEY (id)
, CONSTRAINT current_enrollment_UX1 UNIQUE KEY (student_id, course_id)
, CONSTRAINT FK_currrent_enrollment_student FOREIGN KEY ( student_id )
REFERENCES student (id) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE RESTRICT
, CONSTRAINT FK_currrent_enrollment_course FOREIGN KEY ( course_id )
REFERENCES course (id) ON UPDATE CASCADE ON DELETE RESTRICT
)