> >As someone previously stated, the major drawback to this > >design is that you can only have one parent for each item. If you need > >an item to have more than one parent, you would have to develop a two > >table design. > > I can't imagine a scenario where I would need to have a single child have > two parent records...but if I DID need that, I believe I might just go > ahead and clone my child (create two child records with the same category > description), giving each one the appropriate parent ID. Hopefully this > would be the rare exception to the rule...that way I could stick to my one > table design and not have to, as was pointed out, get myself into the > situation where i could potentially have to be creating X number of tables > to support my relationships.
I can actually think of several situations. For example, one content management system I developed had this requirement - it supported multiple sites that often had certain content pages in common. Allowing a child to have multiple parents allowed for pieces of content to live in more than one place without having to dupe the record, so if the content was edited, the changes were reflected everywhere the page appeared. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:250574 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
