Im about to start a "quiz" project, with questions and answers. And before i start, I just want to check with you experts on how the database design should be.
I have googled, and searched SO and found this answer, where it should be two tables. One with questions, and one with answers.
TABLE questions
FIELDS: id, text
TABLE answers
FIELDS: id, question_id, text, correct
I think i will have about 100+ questions from different subject though.
So i was thinking to add a subject row so sorting, and displaying questions from a specific subject is possible, something like this:
The question table will look like this for example:
+----+-----------+---------------------------------------+
| id | subject | text |
+----+-----------+---------------------------------------+
| 0 | beer | what is the best beer in the world? |
| 1 | mountains | what is the world's highest mountain? |
+----+-----------+---------------------------------------+
And answers table, were 1 is the correct answer:
+----+------+---------------+---------+
| id | q_id | text | correct |
+----+------+---------------+---------+
| 0 | 0 | carlsberg | 1 |
| 1 | 0 | heiniken | 0 |
| 2 | 0 | root beer | 0 |
| 3 | 0 | budweiser | 0 |
| 4 | 1 | k2 | 0 |
| 5 | 1 | Kangchenjunga | 0 |
| 6 | 1 | Mount Everest | 1 |
| 7 | 1 | Makalu | 0 |
+----+------+---------------+---------+
My question/s:
Is there another more efficient (or even easier) way of doing things?
It isn't the best solution..
I would suggest to drop column q_id from answers and create a linking table called like: questions_to_answers with columns: id (int autoincrement), question_id (int), answer_id (int) and correct_answer (tinyint) instead.
That way you could re-use answers to multiple questions (many-to-many relationship) or just have duplicated answers to the same question. It gives you move powerful and robust solution in my opinion.
Related
I have mysql with a user table with answers from a poll saved as a bitwise. How do I find the user with most or least common answers with the reference bitwise?
+------+---------+--+
| User | Answers | |
+------+---------+--+
| A | 1 | |
| B | 5 | |
| C | 10 | |
+------+---------+--+
Assuming by 'reference bitwise' you mean that you have another value that is a bitmask that you are trying to match against the Answers column, something like this should do it for you. In this case, I'm using '4' as the reference bitmask and myTable as the name of your table..
SELECT User, BIT_COUNT(Answers & 4) AS MatchedBits FROM myTable ORDER BY MatchedBits DESC
This returns:
+------+-------------+
| User | MatchedBits |
+------+-------------+
| B | 1 |
| A | 0 |
| C | 0 |
+------+-------------+
You can also add a LIMIT 1 clause to get just the top result, but of course that won't tell you if there is more than one top result with the same number of bits matched.
I created a table (t_subject) like this
| id | description | enabled |
|----|-------------|---------|
| 1 | a | 1 |
| 2 | b | 1 |
| 3 | c | 1 |
And another table (t_place) like this
| id | description | enabled |
|----|-------------|---------|
| 1 | d | 1 |
| 2 | e | 1 |
| 3 | f | 1 |
Right now data from t_subject is used for each of t_place records, to show HTML dropdowns, with all the results from t_subject.
So I simply do
SELECT * FROM t_subject WHERE enabled = 1
Now just for one of t_place records, one record from t_subject should be hidden.
I don't want to simply delete it with javascript, since I want to be able to customize all of the dropdowns if anything changes.
So the first thing I though was to add a place_id column to t_subject.
But this means I have to duplicate all of t_subject records, I would have 3 of each, except one that would have 2.
Is there any way to avoid this??
I thought adding an id_exclusion column to t_subject so I could duplicate records only whenever a record is excluded from another id from t_place.
How bad would that be?? This way I would have no duplicates, so far.
Hope all of this makes sense.
While you only need to exclude one course, I would still recommend setting up a full 'place-course' association. You essentially have a many-to-many relationship, despite not explicitly linking your tables.
I would recommend an additional 'bridging' or 'associative entity' table to represent which courses are offered at which places. This new table would have two columns - one foreign key for the ID of t_subject, and one for the ID of t_place.
For example (t_place_course):
| place_id | course_id |
|----------|-----------|
| 1 | 1 |
| 1 | 2 |
| 1 | 3 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 2 | 2 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 1 |
| 3 | 3 |
As you can see in my example above, place 3 doesn't offer course 2.
From here, you can simply query all of the courses available for a place by querying the place_id:
SELECT * from t_place_course WHERE place_id = 3
The above will return both courses 1 and 3.
You can optionally use a JOIN to get the other information about the course or place, such as the description:
SELECT `t_course`.`description`
FROM `t_course`
INNER JOIN `t_place_course`
ON `t_course`.`id` = `t_place_course`.`course_id`
INNER JOIN `t_place`
ON `t_place`.`id` = `place_id`
I want to build a page like shown below and all data should be retrieved from a database. Both the term, subject and sentences is retrieved from a database. Three levels of data. And under each term (eg. Spring 2017) I can pick and choose between all of these sentences.
Spring 2017
Subject1
Sentence 1
Sentence 2
Sentence 3
Subject2
Sentence 13
Sentence 12
Sentence 17
Subject3
Sentence 11
Sentence 14
Sentence 19
Autmn 2017
...
I want to present similar info from database to user, and let the user choose between all this sentences. How should i build up my database for achieving this in the best and most efficient way.
One way is:
Table 'subject' Table 'sentences'
| id | subjects | | id | subjectid | name |
| 3 | Subject1 | | 1 | 3 | Sentence 2 |
| 4 | Subject2 | | 2 | 4 | Sentence 13 |
Table 'term'
| id | term | sentenceid |
| 1 | Spring 17 | 1,2,28 |
Another way is maybe using pivot-tables, something like this:
Table 'sentences'
| id | parentid | name |
| 1 | 0 | Subject2 |
| 2 | 3 | Sentence 2 |
| 3 | 0 | Subject1 |
| 4 | 1 | Sentence 13 |
Table 'term'
| id | term | sentenceid |
| 1 | Spring 17 | 2,4,28 |
Notice: Number of terms can be many more than just two in a year.
Is it any of this structures you recommend, or any other way you think I should build my database? Is one of these more efficient? Not so demanding? Easier to adjust?
You are doing relational analysis/design:
Find all substantives/nouns of your domain. These are candidates for tables.
Find any relationships/associations between those substantives. "Has", "consists of", "belongs to", "depends on" and so on. Divide them into 1:1, 1:n, n:m associations.
look hard at the 1:1 ones and check if you can reduce two of your original tables into one.
the 1:n lead you to foreign keys in one of the tables.
the n:m give you additional association tables, possibly with their own attributes.
That's about it. I would strongly advise against optimizing for speed or space at this point. Any modem RDBMS will be totally indifferent against the number of rows you are likely to encounter in your example. All database related software (ORMs etc.) expect such a clean model. Packing ids into comma separated fields is an absolutes no-no as it defeats all mechanisms your RDBMS has to deal with such data; it makes the application harder to program; it confuses GUIs and so on.
Making weird choices in your table setup so they deviate from a clean model of your domain is the #1 cause of trouble along the way. You can optimize for performance later, if and when you actually get into trouble. Except for extreme cases (huge data sets or throughput), such optimisation primarily takes place inside the RDBMS (indexes, storage parameters, buffer management etc.) or by optimizing your queries, not by changing the tables.
If the data is hierarchical, consider representing it with a single table, with one column referencing a simple lookup for the "entry type".
Table AcademicEntry
================================
| ID | EntryTypeID | ParentAcademicEntryID | Description |
==========================================================
| 1 | 3 | 3 | Sentence 1 |
| 2 | 1 | <null> | Spring 2017 |
| 3 | 2 | 2 | Subject1 |
Table EntryType
================================
| ID | Description |
====================
| 1 | Semester |
| 2 | Subject |
| 3 | Sentence |
Start with the terms. Every term has subjects. Every subject has sentences. Then you may need the position of a subject within a term and probably the position of a sentence in a subject.
Table 'term'
id | term
---+------------
1 | Spring 2017
Table 'subject'
id | title | termid | pos
---+----------+--------+----
3 | Subject1 | 1 | 1
4 | Subject2 | 1 | 2
5 | Subject3 | 1 | 3
Table 'sentence'
id | name | subjectid | pos
---+-------------+-----------+-----
1 | Sentence 2 | 3 | 2
2 | Sentence 13 | 4 | 1
3 | Sentence 1 | 3 | 1
4 | Sentence 3 | 3 | 3
2 | Sentence 17 | 4 | 3
...
This table design Should resolve your need.
TblSeason
(
SeasonId int,
SeasonName varchar(30)
)
tblSubject
(
Subjectid int
sessionid int (fk to tblsession)
SubjectData varchar(max)
)
tblSentences
(
SentencesID INT
Subjectid int (Fk to tblSubject)
SentenceData varchar(max)
)
| postid | ref_postid | title |
| 1 | 0 | Title 1 |
| 2 | 1 | |
| 3 | 1 | |
| 4 | 0 | Title 2 |
| 5 | 4 | |
It´s a table for a discussion forum. When ref_postid = 0, that means it is a main post. When ref_postid is not 0 it is a answer and references to a postid, see table example above. (Only main posts has a title.)
I want to select all rows in the table, but the problem is that I want to display the title for the discussion an answer refers to.
Example: Let´s say I want the row where postid = 2, I also want to get "Title 1" which is the name of the discussion.
I tried doing it with CASE but I just got errors. I´m not very good at this. Is it doable with one query? Or will I have to use two queries?
Thanks for your help!
select ifnull(q.title, a.title) title, ... (other columns)
from posts a
left join posts q on a.ref_postid <> 0 and a.ref_postid = q.postid
I have developed a website (PHP) that allow staffs to add records on to our system.
Staffs will be adding thousands of records into our database.
I need a way to keep track of what record have been done and the process/status of record.
Here a number of Teams I could think of:
Data Entry Team
Proof Reading Team
Admin Team
When staff (Data Entry Team) completed a record - he/she will then click on the Complete button. Then somehow it should asssign to 'Proof Reading Team' automatically.
A record need to be checked twice from a Proof Reading Team. If StaffB finish proof reading then another member from Proof Reading Team need to check it again.
When Proof reading is done, Admin Team will then assign "Record Completed"
In a few months later record might need to be updated (spelling mistake, price change, etc) - Admin might to assign record to Data entry team.
Is this good data entry management solution? How do I put this into Database Design perspective?
Here what I tried:
mysql> select * from records;
+----+------------+----------------------+
| id | name | address |
+----+------------+----------------------+
| 1 | Bill Gates | Text 1 Text Text 1 |
| 2 | Jobs Steve | Text 2 Text 2 Text 2 |
+----+------------+----------------------+
mysql> select * from staffs;
+----+-----------+-----------+---------------+
| id | username | password | group |
+----+-----------+-----------+---------------+
| 1 | admin1 | admin1 | admin |
| 2 | DEntryA | DEntryA | data_entry |
| 3 | DEntryB | DEntryB | data_entry |
| 4 | PReadingA | PReadingA | proof_reading |
| 5 | PReadingB | PReadingB | proof_reading |
+----+-----------+-----------+---------------+
mysql> select * from data_entry;
+----+------------+-----------+------------------------+
| id | records_id | staffs_id | record_status |
+----+------------+-----------+------------------------+
| 1 | 2 | 3 | data_entry_processiing |
| 2 | 2 | 3 | data_entry_completed |
| 3 | 2 | 4 | proof_read_processing |
| 4 | 2 | 4 | proof_read_completed |
| 5 | 2 | 5 | proof_read_processing |
| 6 | 2 | 5 | proof_read_completed |
+----+------------+-----------+------------------------+
Is there alternative better solution of database design?
i think design it's well done. but may be you want to separate group into groups table, and record_status into status table. If you're storing a lot of records you would store a lot of useless information, at least create an enum type for record_status field and group field
table: groups
id - name 1 - admin 2 - data_entry 3 - proof_reading
...
table: status
id - name 1 - data_entry_processing ...
and if you want the users to be in different groups at a time, you could create users_group table
table: user_groups
group_id - user_id 1 - 1 2 - 1 1 - 4 3 -
4 4 - 4 ....
Hope this helps