Re: Implementing product attributes

"Kyle Lahnakoski" <kyle_at_arcavia.com> wrote in message news:38D763D7.FE7E4EED_at_arcavia.com...

> Joe \"Nuke Me Xemu\" Foster wrote:
 

> > Either scheme gets unwieldy fast. I'd love to hear about alternatives!
 

> Why would the first scheme get unweildy fast?

I was considering how one would model the situation where you have multiple types of beverages and books or expanded the business to handle many other objects besides beverages and books. In one, you'd have a whole mess of tables, including perhaps sub-sub tables and sub-sub-sub tables, so adding a new object might involve inserting into three or four tables. In the other, you'd end up with a lot of fields, most of which are unused in any particular row, and a very complex validation rule. However, I've seen the sub-table approach used in object-oriented languages, with each subtype responsible for maintaining its own subtable. Thomas Muller's approach looks interesting, though.

--
Joe Foster <mailto:jfoster_at_ricochet.net>  Space Cooties! <http://www.xenu.net/>
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