I'm building application where users can import their applications. For every application that user import he has option to import his users. Also, he has ability to add custom fields to the table where his users are stored. When I proposed solution that creates a new table for every users application, my chief told me that's not good solution because there will be too much tables (for 1000 applications 2000 tables). Now I'm wondering what is the optimal solution to this MySQL resource trouble?
You have a single core users table with the most common fields (id, username, password, email, application id, etc.), where the application id distinguishes between users of different applications.
You create a property definition table, where you have application id, property id and property name fields as a minimum (if other tables are extendible as well, then you should have a field identifiying the table the property relates to).
You will also need a properties table to hold the actual propery values. If multiple tables are extendable, then you may consider having multiple properties table. The properties table will have application id, user id, property id, property value fields as a minimum. Property value field should have a general data type, such as varchar because you can store almost all data types as text.
This way you can avoid creating separate user table for each of the applications. The drawback is that it will be more complicated to retrieve and edit user data.
Related
I'm new to MySQL and databases, and this question is more about best practices than exact code.
If I want to create a database that let's users register an "account" so they are then able to access and track the value of virtual goods in a video game, including selecting items from a list and marking them (thus requiring the choices to be associated with their account), Is it better to store the users choices in the same table that holds their username/account-info? Or should the information be stored in a separate table with a reference to the associated account?
Or should I create a table for each user, instead of having one for registration/account info, and another for data, etc.?
Does the best practice for this vary with the expected number of users and/or amount of data?
Is there a way to set it up that allows for handling growth from 2 or 3 users to hundreds?
The answer is to create one table for accounts, one table with choices that are referenced to that account with some type of token.
There's no reason to create a new table for each user. You should have one table, and differentiate between the users using the data in the table (e.g., the userid, the username, etc).
I have a requirement to show Different fields to Different User Types.
For Example, Admin UserType, show the form with 10 attributes
Super UserType, show the form with 2 attributes
Normal UserType, show the form with 2 attributes
How do I design the database table such a way UserType and the attributes are dynamic ?
Raja K
I imagine there are some common attributes among the users, right? You might approach this by "supertyping" the tables. First create a base table with the common attributes. Something like this:
Users
----------
ID (PK)
Username
AccountCreatedDate
etc.
Any user account would have a record in this table. Depending on whether or not it makes ongoing operations simpler you might even include a flag in the table indicating the user type.
You might then add additional tables for the other user types, where their PK is also a FK to this base table. Something like this:
AdminUsers
----------
ID (PK, FK to Users)
etc.
That would contain the attributes specific to an admin user. Another table would contain attributes specific to a super user. And so on. An added benefit here is that a single user can have multiple roles and be interpreted in multiple ways depending on the use case. And you can have some simple compiled views in the database which make querying the table structure easier.
This would work well for a static set of user types. If that set is going to change often during normal application usage (that is, if one of the operations of the application is that people can add user types) then you wouldn't want a rigid schema.
In cases like that you might make treat the fields as meta-attributes on a generic table of user properties. So you might have your base table again:
Users
----------
ID (PK)
Username
UserType
etc.
And then you might have a generic table of properties:
UserProperties
----------
ID (PK)
UserID (FK to Users)
PropertyName
PropertyValue
This is more dynamic, but it has some drawbacks that come to mind:
You can't maintain data types in the database. Everything becomes "stringly typed" and it's up to the application to interpret the types correctly. This will result in a ton of defensive programming code in the application.
You can't maintain the schema in the database. Things like required properties would need to be maintained by the application, the database couldn't guarantee it. So the potential for dirtier data is higher.
It's more difficult to query and report on this structure.
So there are pros and cons either way, whichever approach you take is up to you and the needs of the system you're building.
I am designing a database for MySQL to create a relationship between two users of an application. I am unsure of the best way to store the particulars of this relationship, though I currently intend to use one record per relationship in a link table called RELATIONS. Each user has basic data like their name and occupation stored in the USERS table, and more specific personal data stored linked by FKs in other tables, which we'll say are called OTHER1, OTHER2, and OTHER3, which will all contain some other data to be shared, we'll say each in a field called [Data] and identified with ID and USER_ID.
The difficulty is that the application allows users to specify what basic and advanced data that they show to each user, and vice versa. The RELATIONS link table needs to have FKs to USERS for the two users to set up the relationship, but I don't know how best to specify what data each user is able to share, because virtually all of the data that the database stores is stored optionally but all needs to possibly be hidden from a user that doesn't have permission to view it. The second user should be able to see if there is data there, however, so that he might request permission to view it.
My model for RELATIONS at this point looks like this:
RELATIONS
ID
USER_ID1
USER_ID2
USER1OTHER1_ID [(Value), Unshared, Null]
...
USER1OTHER100_ID [(Value), Unshared, Null]
USER2OTHER1_ID [(Value), Unshared, Null]
...
USER2OTHER100_ID [(Value), Unshared, Null]
So USER1OTHER1_ID will contain the FK to OTHER1 if User1 has shared it with User2, will be "Unshared" if it's present but unshared, and Null if User1 has no data in OTHER1. Same for USER2OTHER1 for sharing with User1. I don't like having a massive field array, though, and I don't like how I'd have to update all the relations if User1 later decides to add data to OTHER1. Is there a simpler and more normalised way of representing this?
I believe the normalized approach would be to only store whether userA has permissions to view the userB's data and not add FK references to it in the Relations table because you already have references to userB's data somewhere else. By storing additional references in the Relations table you are duplicating data and will have to ensure that it stays synchronized as you described in your question which will probably be an ongoing maintenance hassle and one more thing you have to keep in mind whenever you refactor your code.
If you only store permissions (no fks) in the Relations table you would join on a table (User?) to get the User's shared data or to see if it exists depending on the permission.
As far as having an excessive number of columns on the relations table, I don't think you will have enough to see a real degradation when querying the table (you could correct me on this). For clarity sake in the db code as well as your application code, I think you are better off to have a column for each permission than to try to find a short cut such as combining them in a clob or something.
The most succinct way I can readily imagine is to store one INT with the relationship, which is a bit-wise representation of the permissions; with the interpretation of that INT in the code. The INT will need as many bits as you have unique permissions, and then define constants for each of them. I'm not sure what language you are implementing in, but there about a few ways to skin this cat...
So, some pseudo-code might look like this:
define RELATION_PERMISSION_SEE_MY_PHOTOS = 1;
define RELATION_PERMISSION_SEE_MY_FRIENDS = 1<<1;
define RELATION_PERMISSION_SEE_MY_EMAIL = 1<<2;
and then build some arrays of supporting info (like localized strings, etc) to build your interface with, and then do something like this to modify it:
int new_permission = 0
foreach(user-selected-permissions as selected_permission) {
new_permission |= selected_permission
}
my_relation_model.permissions_flags = new_permission
one way would be to use essentially key value pairs..
similar to this:
user_1_id
user_2_id
field
privilege
.. because virtually all of the data that the database stores is stored optionally ...
Considering this, I would suggest 6NF for all user attributes.
The User table serves as an anchor and ideally holds only UserID.
Each user attribute has its own table with only UserID and the attribute value (6NF); a row exists only if the attribute is specified (all attribute values are NOT NULL).
Each attribute has also a sharing table with only OwnerID, VisitorID. A row exists only if the owner shares the attribute with the visitor.
In this model, a user can share only attributes that do exists. If you want to allow sharing of not specified attributes, point the OwnerID to the User table too.
To make thing simpler you can (should) create a view(s) for user data.
I'm creating a social networking site with features similar to Facebook.
I want to start with schema design for my database.
What i thought was to create each table for each user who registers to our site.. am i doing right?
If a million users register to my site, a million tables will be created. how to go on about optimizing this? Please do suggest me techniques to overcome this and some references or books to learn about such concepts will be vry useful..
Thanks in Advance.
This is not the way you want to do it.
What you want to do is have a table (perhaps called 'users') that contains one row for each user that registers. Creating a new table for each user is completely pointless and would cause terrible performance.
Maybe something like this:
TABLE users
- username AS VARCHAR(255)
- password AS VARCHAR(255) (use a hashed password, of course)
- ...
Then when a user registers, simply insert the information they provide into the users table as a new row.
That would be massive overkill. You should probably read up on database design (start with normalisation, but don't overdo it). Then write down what you want to save for each user, and think about how to save it without saving data double.
But I'm pretty sure a table-per-user is not an option for this.
You must be confusing the meaning of the words database, table, field (or column), record (or row).
A database contains all your data for a specific project. There is always one database per project (or almost always)
A table contains all data of a specific entity and by saying entity, I mean an object type that is imaginable as real or seperatelly existing by itself. A person is an entity, a book is an entity, a phone is an entity, a movie is an entity, etc. Each of these would be seperate tables in a database.
A field (or column) is a data type that represents a specific characteristic (feature) of a table's entity. For example a table of users can have the fields: NAME, SURNAME, AGE, etc. These are all features that a user has.
A record (or row) is an actual item of one table. It is a single 'piece' of the table's entity. For example in a table of users, one record is one single user, namely {NAME:"John", SURNAME:"Smith", AGE:"32"}.
In your example, I can tell you for sure that you only need one database. You want to store information for many users, so you need one table called USER. You will need to store features to your users, like: name, surname, age, address, etc., then you will need to create the respective fields in this table: NAME, SURNAME, AGE, ADDRESS, etc. Then you will need to insert your data in the database as records. It will be one record per user you want to store.
We are currently thinking about different ways to implement custom fields for our web application. Users should be able to define custom fields for certain entities and fill in/view this data (and possibly query the data later on).
I understand that there are different ways to implement custom fields (e.g. using a name/value table or using alter table etc.) and we are currently favoring using ALTER TABLE to dynamically add new user fields to the database.
After browsing through other related SO topics, I couldn't find any big drawbacks of this solution. In contrast, having the option to query the data in fast way (e.g. by directly using SQL's where statement) is a big advantage for us.
Are there any drawbacks you could think of by implementing custom fields this way? We are talking about a web application that is used by up to 100 users at the same time (not concurrent requests..) and can use both MySQL and MS SQL Server databases.
Just as an update, we decided to add new columns via ALTER TABLE to the existing database table to implement custom fields. After some research and tests, this looks like the best solution for most database engines. A separate table with meta information about the custom fields provides the needed information to manage, query and work with the custom fields.
The first drawback I see is that you need to grant your application service with ALTER rights.
This implies that your security model needs careful attention as the application will be able to not only add fields but to drop and rename them as well and create some tables (at least for MySQL).
Secondly, how would you distinct fields that are required per user? Or can the fields created by user A be accessed by user B?
Note that the cardinality of the columns may also significantly grow. If every user adds 2 fields, we are already talking about 200 fields.
Personally, I would use one of the two approaches or a mix of them:
Using a serialized field
I would add one text field to the table in which I would store a serialized dictionary or dictionaries:
{
user_1: {key1: val1, key2, val2,...},
user_2: {key1: val1, key2, val2,...},
...
}
The drawback is that the values are not easily searchable.
Using a multi-type name/value table
fields table:
user_id: int
field_name: varchar(100)
type: enum('INT', 'REAL', 'STRING')
values table:
field_id: int
row_id: int # the main table row id
int_value: int
float_value: float
text_value: text
Of course, it requires a join and is a bit more complicated to implement but far more generic and, if indexed properly, quite efficient.
I see nothing wrong with adding new custom fields to the database table.
With this approach, the specific/most appropriate type can be used i.e. need an int field? define it as int. Whereas with a name/value type table, you'd be storing multiple data types as one type (nvarchar probably) - unless you complete that name/value table with multiple columns of different types and populate the appropriate one but that is a bit horrible.
Also, adding new columns makes it easier to query/no need to involve a join to a new name/value table.
It may not feel as generic, but I feel that's better than having a "one-size fits all" name/value table.
From an SQL Server point of view (2005 onwards)....
An alternative, would be to store create 1 "custom data" field of type XML - this would be truly generic and require no field creation or the need for a separate name/value table. Also has the benefit that not all records have to have the same custom data (i.e. the one field is common, but what it contains doesn't have to be). Not 100% on the performance impact but XML data can be indexed.