DB design issue

From: <lore.conti_at_tiscali.it>
Date: 17 Nov 2006 06:14:56 -0800
Message-ID: <1163772896.749422.224270@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>

hi,
I'm going to design a db for an Interface Requirement Specification Tool.
In practise I have the following main tables:
-System
-Interface
-Message

A system can have some interfaces.
An interfaces can have some messages.
That's the easy thing.
Now, a message is compose by some fields. These fields can be simple basic data type (like integer, boolean, float), or composed data type. i.e.
Message: Health Status

pos  type          name       description
1     HEADER   Header     Header of the message
2     HEALTH    Health      Health status data
3      int            foo           whatever

I thought to have a 'Type' table and a 'Block' table. The Block table will contains the fields composing a block (something like a message).
Now, I'm wondering how to design the Message table and how to link a 'type ID' with either a simple type (Type table) or a composed type (Block table).

Can anyone help me?

thank you
Lorenzo Received on Fri Nov 17 2006 - 08:14:56 CST