If you store and keep any personal information such as you describe, beyond
a simple list of email addresses with no associated personal information,
you will need to stay on the right side of the Data Protection Act. You
will need to register with them at a cost of £35 a year and comply with
certain provisions of the Act, this applies even if you have specifically
asked people's permission to keep the information. A useful fact sheet is
at
http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/cms/DocumentUploads/Data%20Protection%20Act%20Fact%20V2.pdf
As far as database design goes - remember the important thing is to
eliminate duplication. There is not a one-to-one relationship between a
person and their email address, as there can be more than one email for a
given person and sometimes, more than one person using a given email. So
this is a many-to-many relationship and for a fully normalised database you
need an emails table, a people table and a lookup table to store the
relationships
eg
Table 1: email (email key, email address)
Table 2: email relationships (email key, user id)
Table 3: Users (Userid, user name, user dob...)
What you really need is 2 years of an ONC or HNC evening class where you can
learn the true wonders of 4th normal form and talk about schemas and
paradigms as though they mean something
I am having the joys of education brought home to me at the moment by a 5
day MCSE course on ' Planning, Implementing and Maintaining Server 2003
Active Directory' which I have been sent on so I know how to change a user's
password for them when they forget it. Tomorrow we start on Group Policies.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 4:53 PM
Subject: [wdvltalk] Database design first steps
I have, at long last, returned to designing a new site; in the time
interval my knowledge has become shaky to say the least :-o
I am doing my best to follow the advice of Julie C Meloni in a SAMS book.
The plan is to collect email addresses by a voluntary form, via PayPal
notification, through a Guest Book, review writing (the site is for a
book)
and possibly through a shopping cart (though this is a one product site).
I hope to get the visitor/purchaser's country and whether they have
bought,
visited, reviewed and/or filled in the guest book.
Have you an opinion on whether all the addresses should be in one table;
and are there any special relationship tricks I ought to be aware of for
that.
TIA
Joseph
Joseph Harris
www.smilepoetryweekly.com
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