OT: Quick design question

griff posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008

Hi

I always waiver on how to deal with this. Any views.
Questionnaire 30 questions.  10 questions or so have multiple options e.g. which sports do you like - followed by 10-15 check boxes - one or all can be checked.

So do I create a child table (ApplicantID, QuestionID, Selected) (and BO) to hold these answers types or simply add  these (10-15) answers, as individual yes/no type fields, to my main table (tblApplicantAnswers).

Other info - this is a one-off type project.

Thanks

Richard

JoeFallon1 replied on Thursday, January 17, 2008

When I get to design the tables I am firmly in the child table approach.

This is because adding another row is trivial and there are no code changes.

But I have to deal with the yes/no fields in the main table quite often.

Whenever a new one is added there is a lot of code to change. And a new one is added every time we develop the next version of the app!

So even for a "one-off" project I vote for the child table aproach. When you re-visit it in a year to expand it then you can thank me. <g>

Joe