> I'm wondering why you would keep the questions & answers in separate  
 tables? Seems like an over complication for a simple question/answer
scenario.

Quite a few simple reasons:

1)Not all questions will have the same number of answers associated
with them: I have true/false questions as well as multiple choice
questions.

2)I can reuse the same answers in multiple questions without data
redundancy.

3)It could be worse:  I could have 1 table containing questions, 1
table linking questions to sets of answers, 1 table linking sets of
answers to answers, and 1 table of answers, which would result in a
completely optimized and normalized database for holding large number
of questions and answers.  In that situation, each question could have
multiple sets of answers and the same set of answers appear in
multiple questions.  I've already passed having 100 answers, but at
this point I don't have enough questions to make the 4 table idea work
[Plus I'm fighting an internal battle to keep it simple.].  But then,
all I would have to do is rand() off the combination of
question/answer set and I would get no duplicates.




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