RE: Schema Design for Surveys

A survey on surveys!

My vote:
1 question table, 1 response table. The question table would be wider than the response table since it would have the question text, as well as the potential answer texts (the choices) and a flag that would tell the application how to display the survey page - as a radio button page or a check box page

The answer table has the question id and user id as the key and a fixed number of columns - checked off corresponding to the user's selection (answers).

Why would anyone suggest multiple response tables?

ck

-----Original Message-----

From: Niall Litchfield [mailto:niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 12:41 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Schema Design for Surveys

We have a requirement for a system that will record answers to more than one survey. Each survey will consist of a number of questions with responses that can be

multiple choice (eg pick up to 3 preferences from 8) text
numeric - single answer

How would people go

one question table, one wide response table one question table, multiple response tables varying on type of response some other construct.

This is an internal discussion that we are having here that interests me (and I do have a preference) and I'd be interested to see what folk think.
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Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.niall.litchfield.dial.pipex.com
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l
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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Mon Jan 10 2005 - 13:01:08 CST