> > What would be the file/table architecture for this situation? > > Suppose you > > have a company that puts out a spring catalog, a fall catalog, a > > summer catalog > > and winter catalog - made up of the same items and going to the same > > customers. > > > > If you had this on a server, would you have one big database with > > an items > > table and customers table, then have a table for winter 2005, > > spring 2005, .... > > winter 2009, etc? Or would you have the base info in one file > > (items and > > customers) then have a separate file for each catalog? > > That really depends on what would be needed. > Would you need to know pages, etc that each item is on ? > > Since the basic items are the same (or similar) the catalog is > basically a cross reference between the catalog issue its in, and the > items that are actually in it. > > You might make the table that is > > CATALOG > catalog_name (spring 2005, summer 2005, fall 2005, winter 2005, etc) > catalog_id (1,2,3,4) > > Then a table that is the cross reference between catalog and products > > CATALOG_ITEMS > catalog_id > product_id > > This set up allows you to rename a catalog without actually doing > anything other than changing the name. > Duplicating a catalog is > make a new entry in the CATALOGS table (this gets a new name and ID) > > insert into CATALOG_ITEMS ( new id from previous step, product_id ) > select product_id from CATALOG_ITEMS where catalog_id = catalog you > want to copy > > Now this may be simplistic as it does not hold things like page > layout information which may be important. >
Thanks Norman. Actually this whole scenario is vastly simplified for the sake of discussion. Essentially, they would want to keep each catalog for each season, then create new ones for the following year using the past year's file as a template. Over time there might be a dozen or more catalogs which would need to be kept separate but usually they would only be working on one at a time. I am thinking to just duplicate the customer and item info in each file and have each file self-contained - but it seems more efficient to have different tables in a big database in some way. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
