I want to make a demo application that is able to ask a user if he/she has followed the correct methods to build an item.
I have created a 'checklist' for the user to fill in as he/she builds the item. For example some of the questions could be:
Have you received the correct parts?
Are the parts in good condition?
Are you building a chair?
Do you have the correct specifications for the chair?
...
...
...
And so on...
So these questions have yes/no answers only. My plan was to create a table and call each column by the questions' number. So column 1 will be called '1' and it's the first question. Column 2 will be called '2' and it's the second question and so on.
So this table will be called Chair inspection. I then have another table called Table inspection with its own set of checklist questions.
This data is captured using an android application. The development of the application is done. Just need advice on the database part.
Is this the correct approach to storing the user's inputs?
I advice you have three tables, one for the questions, the other for the users who will be answering those questions and the last one is for the answers, then you establish the relationship between those three tables. That means Many users can answer many questions. Therefore there will be many to many relationship between users and questions. Then there will be relationship between questions and answers and answer with the users who responded to the questions.
I think that way you will be able to avoid redundancy and simplify the process of updating, and retrieving you data.
A normalised schema might be as follows (incomplete, and ignoring 'tables' for the time being) :
inspection
inspection_id* item inspected_by date
inspection_detail
inspection_id* checklist_id* status
* = (component of) PRIMARY KEY
I have the following database scheme (I don't know if it's perfect but I think it's allright?)
It's a system where a User has many Surveys, the Users provide Answers for Questions in the Survey_Answers table.
Now a User can have multiple Surveys, it's the same questions but in a later time of the year they have to fill in the survey again.
I'm nearly there, I'm just wondering how to connect the answers to the survey. Should I make a relation between survey_answers and user_surveys.. thus adding an id to the user_surveys table
Or do you think it's ok to make a relation to the surveys table? I'm not sure which one is correct.
I outlined the 2 possibilities in the second screenshot.
Looking forward to your responses!
Thank you.
This probably depends on how your system is most likely/most frequently going to navigate the relationship.
If you are more likely to be looking at a Users answers and saying - hey let me see when this question was answered, as part of which dated survey, then you should join on user_surveys (I am assuming that the employee_id you are storing would match the user_id in user_surveys)
If you're more likely to be looking at a Users answers and saying - hey what survey did this question belong to, then you should join on Surveys.
You can still answer either question whichever join you use, it will just be a matter of more optimal performance (fewer table joins when trying to answer the most common query).
In reality there probably isn't much in it, so you could always toss a coin :)
I'm writing an application to allow users to create a Poll. They ask a question and set n number of predefined answers to the question. Other users can vote on the answers provided for that question.
Current structure
I have designed the database like this:
Storing the vote count
Current thinking is, I create a new column called vote_count on the link table and every time that answer gets voted, it updates the record.
This works. But is it right? I'm new to database systems, so I can't imagine I'm doing much right. What are some more efficient ways to achieve this?
As far as it goes yes that's OK. However these tables will be incomplete. When your second quiz is created, you'll have to extend the QUESTIONS table. If this second quiz's Q1 also has a yes/no answer, you're going to have to extend the LINK/VOTES table.
You also have to think about how it's going to be queried and design indexes to support those queries.
Cheers -
Im designing a poll application, where the user creates one or several polls whith questions and predefined answers for each question, so far no problem, im thinking the easiest way to do this is with 3 tables:
Polls Table:
id title description
Questions table:
id poll_id question
Answers table:
id question_id answer
The problem is, the user may select a different behavior on the questioning flow of the poll, for example a normal poll will go from question 1 to question N (being N the final question), but in my case the user may want if the user choose answer 2 of question 4 to jump to question 7 and ignore the rest between them.
Im a bit confuse about how to store in database this behavior, any suggestions?
Looks like you need something similar to this:
Look at the construction of keys here:
The QUESTION is in identifying relationship with POLL and the resulting natural key provides not just uniqueness but ordering as well: QUESTION_NO can monotonically increase while keeping the same POLL_ID.
The equivalent effect is accomplished by ANSWER_NO in POSSIBLE_ANSWER.
The user can pick at most one answer for any given question. That's why ANSWER_NO is outside of the ACTUAL_ANSWER primary key.
On the other hand, USER_ID is kept inside the ACTUAL_ANSWER PK, to allow the same answer to be picked by more than one user.
Theoretically, there should be a key in QUESTION_TABLE on {POLL_ID, QUESTION_TEXT}, to prevent two different questions having the same text in the same poll. However, QUESTION_TEXT might be long and is potentially implemented as BLOB, which most DBMSes can't index or constrain by a key. The similar dilemma exists for POSSIBLE_ANSWER.ANSWER_TEXT.
If user skips a question, just omit the corresponding ACTUAL_ANSWER.
Answer > NextQuestion table
AnswerID NextQuestionID
Based on your answer, the next question is defined in here
this is a follow-up question on my previous one.We junior year students are doing website development for the univeristy as volunteering work.We are using PHP+MySQL technique.
Now I am mainly responsible for the database development using MySQL,but I am a MySQL designer.I am now asking for some hints on writing my first table,to get my hands on it,then I could work well with other tables.
The quesiton is like this,the first thing our website is going to do is to present a Survey to the user to collect their preference on when they want to use the bus service.
and this is where I am going to start my database development.
The User Requirement Document specifies that for the survey,there should be
Customer side:
Survery will be available to customers,with a set of predefined questions and answers and should be easy to fill out
Business side:
Survery info. will be stored,outputed and displayable for analysis.
It doesnt sound too much work,and I dont need to care about any PHP thing,but I am just confused on :should I just creat a single table called " Survery",or two tables "Survey_business" and "Survey_Customer",and how can the database store the info.?
I would be grateful if you guys could give me some help so I can work along,because the first step is always the hardest and most important.
Thanks.
I would use multiple tables. One for the surveys themselves, and another for the questions. Maybe one more for the answer options, if you want to go with multiple-choice questions. Another table for the answers with a record per question per answerer. The complexity escalates as you consider multiple types of answers (choice, fill-in-the-blank single-line, free-form multiline, etc.) and display options (radio button, dropdown list, textbox, yada yada), but for a simple multiple-choice example with a single rendering type, this would work, I think.
Something like:
-- Survey info such as title, publish dates, etc.
create table Surveys
(
survey_id number,
survey_title varchar2(200)
)
-- one record per question, associated with the parent survey
create table Questions
(
question_id number,
survey_id number,
question varchar2(200)
)
-- one record per multiple-choice option in a question
create table Choices
(
choice_id number,
question_id number,
choice varchar2(200)
)
-- one record per question per answerer to keep track of who
-- answered each question
create table Answers
(
answer_id number,
answerer_id number,
choice_id number
)
Then use application code to:
Insert new surveys and questions.
Populate answers as people take the surveys.
Report on the results after the survey is in progress.
You, as the database developer, could work with the web app developer to design the queries that would both populate and retrieve the appropriate data for each task.
only 1 table, you'll change only the way you use the table for each ocasion
customers side insert data into the table
business side read the data and results from the same table
Survey.Customer sounds like a storage function, while Survey.Business sounds like a retrieval function.
The only tables you need are for storage. The retrieval operations will take place using queries and reports of the existing storage tables, so you don't need additional tables for those.
Use a single table only. If you were to use two tables, then anytime you make a change you would in effect have to do everything twice. That's a big pain for maintenance for you and anyone else who comes in to do it in the future.
most of the advice/answers so far are applicable but make certain (unstated!) assumptions about your domain
try to make a logical model of the entities and attributes that are required to capture the requirements, examine the relationships, consider how the data will be used on both sides of the process, and then design the tables. Talk to the users, talk to the people that will be running the reports, talk to whoever is designing the user interface (screens and reports) to get the complete picture.
pay close attention the the reporting requirements, as they often imply additional attributes and entities not extant in the data-entry schema
i think 2 tables needed:
a survey table for storing questions and choices for answer. each survey will be stored in one row with a unique survey id
other table is for storing answers. i think its better to store each customers answer in one row with a survey id and a customer id if necessary.
then you can compute results and store them in a surveyResults view.
Is the data you're presenting as the questions and answers going to be dynamic? Is this a long-term project that's going to have questions swapped in and out? If so, you'll probably want to have the questions and answers in your database as well.
The way I'd do it would be to define your entities and figure out how to design your tables so relationships are straightforward. Sounds to me like you have three entities:
Question
Answer
Completed Survey
Just a sample elaboration of what Steven and Chris has mentioned above.
There are gonna be multiple tables, if there are gonna be multiple surveys, and each survey has a different set of questions, and if same user can take multiple surveys.
Customer Table with CustID as the primary key
Questions Table with a Question ID as the primary key. If a question cannot belong to more than one survey (a N:1 relationship), then can also have Survey ID (of table Survey table mentioned in point 3) as one of the values in the table.
But if a Survey to Question relationship is N:M, then
(SurveryID, QuestionID) would become a composite key for the SurveyTable, else it would just have the SurveyID with the high level details of the survey like description.
UserSurvey table which would contain (USerID, SurveryID, QuestionID, AnswerGiven)
[Note: if same user can take the same survey again and again, either the old survey has to be updated or the repeat attempts have to stored as another rows with some serial number)