NYCPHP Meetup

[Kristina D. H. Anderson]

You could have a table account_type which has primary key 
account_type_id, and a table account which has primary key account_id 
and then a lookup field in account which holds the relevant 
account_type_id...

That way in table customer you just need a lookup field on account_id 
because there is already a relationship in place to find the type of 
account based on that value...I think that's what Tedd just said in 
essence as well.

Although this structure is certainly presupposing that each customer 
has only one account.

Kristina

> At 11:56 AM -0400 9/13/09, Matt Juszczak wrote:
> >>Plus, if you're going to be consistent with that "mistake", then 
> >>your naming should be:
> >>
> >>customer_customer
> >>customer_account
> >>customer_account_type
> >
> >I disagree.  I wasn't trying to create "customer" as a prefix.  I 
> >was simply renaming the tables based on the one:many relationships I 
> >have inside the tables.
> >
> >account
> >account_type
> >customer
> >
> >since customer stores an account_id, and account stores an 
> >account_type id, I could have picked customer to be the main level 
> >table, and just references out from there:
> 
> Mat:
> 
> Main level table?
> 
> I think that's one of the problems. There is no main level table -- 
> there are just tables. It should not make any difference if you are 
> addressing customers, accounts, account_types, emails, or whatever. 
> They are nothing more than data and each has there own relationships.
> 
> Also, I think I see another problem. The account table holds the 
> account_type, right?
> 
> If so, then your customer table should only contain the account_id, 
> but NOT the account_type_id -- that's redundant.
> 
> To access what account-type the customer has means you pull the 
> account_id from the customer table -- then look up that account 
> (using the account_id ) in the account table -- then pull the 
> account_type_id and then find the account-type via it's id 
> (account_type_id) from the account type table. Understand.
> 
> customer: account_id
> account: account_type_id
> account_type: type
> 
> In any event, that's the way I would do it.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> tedd
> 
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