Restructure Inventory Management Database (2 to 3 Tables; Development Stage) - mysql

Question

I’m developing a database. I’d appreciate some help restructuring 2 to 3 tables so the database is both compliant with the first 3 normal forms; and practical to use and to expand on / add to in the future. I want to invest time now to reduce effort / and confusion later.
PREAMBLE
Please be aware that I'm both a nube, and an amateur, though I have a certain amount of experience and skill and an abundance of enthusiasm!
BACKGROUND TO PROJECT
I am writing a small (though ambitious!) web application (using PHP and AJAX to a MySQL database). It is essentially an inventory management system, for recording and viewing the current location of each individual piece of equipment, and its maintenance history. If relevant, transactions will be very low (probably less than 100 a day, but with a possibility of simultaneous connections / operations). Row count will also be very low (maybe a few thousand).
It will deal with many completely different categories of equipment, eg bikes and lamps (to take random examples). Each unit of equipment will have its details or specifications recorded in the database. For a bike, an important specification might be frame colour, whereas a lamp it might require information regarding lampshade material.
Since the categories of equipment have so little in common, I think the most logical way to store the information is 1 table per category. That way, each category can have columns specific to that category.
I intend to store a list of categories in a separate table. Each category will have an id which is unique to that category. (Depending on the final design, this may function as a lookup table and / or as a table to run queries against.) There are likely to be very few categories (perhaps 10 to 20), unless the system is particulary succesful and it expands.
A list of bikes will be held in the bikes table.
Each bike will have an id which is unique to that bike (eg bike 0001).
But the same id will exist in the lamp table (ie lamp 0001).
With my application, I want the user to select (from a dropdown list) the category type (eg bike).
They will then enter the object's numeric id (eg 0001).
The combination of these two ids is sufficient information to uniquely identify an object.
Images:
Current Table Design
Proposed Additional Table
PROBLEM
My gut feeling is that there should be an “overarching table” that encompasses every single article of equipment no matter what category it comes from. This would be far simpler to query against than god knows how many mini tables. But when I try to construct it, it seems like it will break various normal forms. Eg introducing redundancy, possibility of inconsistency, referential integrity problems etc. It also begins to look like a domain table.
Perhaps the overarching table should be a query or view rather than an entity?
Could you please have a look at the screenshots and let me know your opinion. Thanks.
For various reasons, I’d prefer to use surrogate keys rather than natural keys if possible. Ideally, I’d prefer to have that surrogate key in a single column.
Currently, the bike (or lamp) table uses just the first column as its primary key. Should I expand this to a composite key including the Equipment_Category_ID column too? Then make the Equipment_Article table into a view joining on these two columns (iteratively for each equipment category). Optionally Bike_ID and Lamp_ID columns could be renamed to something generic like Equipment_Article_ID. This might make the query simpler, but is there a risk of losing specificity? It would / could still be qualified by the table name.
Speaking of redundancy, the Equipment_Category_ID in the current lamp or bike tables seems a bit redundant (if every item / row in that table has the same value in that column).
It all still sounds messy! But surely this must be very common problem for eg online electronics stores, rental shops, etc. Hopefully someone will say oh that old chestnut! Fingers crossed! Sorry for not being concise, but I couldn't work out what bits to leave out. Most of it seems relevant, if a bit chatty. Thanks in advance.
UPDATE 27/03/2014 (Reply to #ElliotSchmelliot)
Hi Elliot.
Thanks for you reply and for pointing me in the right direction. I studied OOP (in Java) but wasn't aware that something similar was possible in SQL. I read the link you sent with interest, and the rest of the site/book looks like a great resource.
Does MySQL InnoDB Support Specialization & Generalization?
Unfortunately, after 3 hours searching and reading, I still can't find the answer to this question. Keywords I'm searching with include: MySQL + (inheritance | EER | specialization | generalization | parent | child | class | subclass). The only positive result I found is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_entity%E2%80%93relationship_model. It mentions MySQL Workbench.
Possible Redundancy of Equipment_Category (Table 3)
Yes and No. Because this is a lookup table, it currently has a function. However because every item in the Lamp or the Bike table is of the same category, the column itself may be redundant; and if it is then the Equipment_Category table may be redundant... unless it is required elsewhere. I had intended to use it as the RowSource / OptionList for a webform dropdown. Would it not also be handy to have Equipment_Category as a column in the proposed Equipment parent table. Without it, how would one return a list of all Equipment_Names for the Lamp category (ignoring distinct for the moment).
Implementation
I have no way of knowing what new categories of equipment may need to be added in future, so I’ll have to limit attributes included in the superclass / parent to those I am 100% sure would be common to all (or allow nulls I suppose); sacrificing duplication in many child tables for increased flexibility and hopefully simpler maintenance in the long run. This is particulary important as we will not have professional IT support for this project.
Changes really do have to be automated. So I like the idea of the stored procedure. And the CreateBike example sounds familiar (in principle if not in syntax) to creating an instance of a class in Java.
Lots to think about and to teach myself! If you have any other comments, suggestions etc, they'd be most welcome. And, could you let me know what software you used to create your UML diagram. Its styling is much better than those that I've used.
Cheers!

Answer 1

You sound very interested in this project, which is always awesome to see!
I have a few suggestions for your database schema:
You have individual tables for each Equipment entity i.e. Bike or Lamp. Yet you also have an Equipment_Category table, purely for identifying a row in the Bike table as a Bike or a row in the Lamp table as a Lamp. This seems a bit redundant. I would assume that each row of data in the Bike table represents a Bike, so why even bother with the category table?
You mentioned that your "gut" feeling is telling you to go for an overarching table for all Equipment. Are you familiar with the practice of generalization and specialization in database design? What you are looking for here is specialization (also called "top-down".) I think it would be a great idea to have an overarching or "parent" table that represents Equipment. Then, each sub-entity such as Bike or Lamp would be a child table of Equipment. A parent table only has the fields that all child tables share.
With these suggestions in mind, here is how I might alter your schema:
In the above schema, everything starts as Equipment. However, each Equipment can be specialized into Lamp, Bike, etc. The Equipment entity has all of the common fields. Lamp and Bike each have fields specific to their own type. When creating an entity, you first create the Equipment, then you create the specialized entity. For example, say we are adding the "BMX 200 Ultra" bike. We first create a record in the Equipment table with the generic information (equipmentName, dateOfPurchase, etc.) Then we create the specialized record, in this case a Bike record with any additional bike-specific fields (wheelType, frameColor, etc.) When creating the specialized entities, we need to make sure to link them back to the parent. This is why both the Lamp and Bike entities have a foreign key for equipmentID.
An easy and effective way to add specialized entities is to create a stored procedure. For example, lets say we have a stored procedure called CreateBike that takes in parameters bikeName, dateOfPurchase, wheelType, and frameColor. The stored procedure knows we are creating a Bike, and therefore can easily create the Equipment record, insert the generic equipment data, create the bike record, insert the specialized bike data, and maintain the foreign key relationship.
Using specialization will make your transactional life very simple. For example, if you want all Equipment purchased before 1/1/14, no joins are needed. If you want all Bikes with a frameColor of blue, no joins are needed. If you want all Lamps made of felt, no joins are needed. The only time you will need to join a specialized table back to the Equipment table is if you want data both from the parent entity and the specialized entity. For example, show all Lamps that use 100 Watt bulbs and are named "Super Lamp."
Hope this helps and best of luck!
Edit
Specialization and Generalization, as mentioned in your provided source, is part of an Enhanced Entity Relationship (EER) which helps define a conceptual data model for your schema. As such, it does not need to be "supported" per say, it is more of a design technique. Therefore any database schema naturally supports specialization and generalization as long as the designer implements it.
As far as your Equipment_Category table goes, I see where you are coming from. It would indeed make it easy to have a dropdown of all categories. However, you could simply have a static table (only contains Strings that represent each category) to help with this population, and still keep your Equipment tables separate. You mentioned there will only be around 10-20 categories, so I see no reason to have a bridge between Equipment and Equipment_Category. The fewer joins the better. Another option would be to include an "equipmentCategory" field in the Equipment table instead of having a whole table for it. Then you could simply query for all unique equipmentCategory values.
I agree that you will want to keep your Equipment table to guaranteed common values between all children. Definitely. If things get too complicated and you need more defined entities, you could always break entities up again down the road. For example maybe half of your Bike entities are RoadBikes and the other half are MountainBikes. You could always continue the specialization break down to better get at those unique fields.
Stored Procedures are great for automating common queries. On top of that, parametrization provides an extra level of defense against security threats such as SQL injections.
I use SQL Server. The diagram I created is straight out of SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). You can simply expand a database, right click on the Database Diagrams folder, and create a new diagram with your selected tables. SSMS does the rest for you. If you don't have access to SSMS I might suggest trying out Microsoft Visio or if you have access to it, Visual Paradigm.