A better choice of database structure for hierarchical records

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

In my Wpf VS application with SQLite, I want to use my old data sheet,
whose entries are of something like an hierarchical structure below :

Field name (F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6)
Cell contents (x y z * * *) about 50,000 rows, string type

The number of different cell contents of the fields F1, F2 and F3 is about
10, 15 and 20 respectively, being added or removed dynamically when application runs.

And the contents of F2 depend on the the content of F1. For example,
if x == 'fruits', then y == 'Apple' or 'Mango' 'Banana' ...
if x == 'animals', then y == 'Monkey' or 'Elephant' ...

The contents of F3 depend only on the content of F2 similarly.
So total number of ordered triple (F1, F2, F3) is about 3000.

I managed to understand little about data binding in WPF, DataGrid, SQLite, but no further
progress in creating database, I mean... what is the multiple databases, foreign keys, database relations for?
I wonder if it's ok using just 1 table created by
create table AAA (id int primary key, F1 varchar(20), F2 varchar(20), F3 varchar(20),
F4 varchar(512), F5 varchar(512), F6 varchar(512)),
which is almost the same as spreadsheet's one.

Greatly appreciated if any comments.

Posted 21-Apr-14 7:09am

Sor Emi

Updated 21-Apr-14 8:40am

v8

Add a Solution

Comments

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Apr-14 14:46pm

Just a note: database structure is not a "choice", this is a development step. :-)
—SA

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Manas Bhardwaj · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-21T08:54:00

I would suggest that you buy a good basic SQL book and go through it. It will help you to get most of the answers. And not only for this question, but for the future.

Understanding of data modelization always helps.

Coming back to you question. It's a small 6 columns table (datasheet). So, practically speaking you can continue with it as is if you don't want to scale up/out you application in future.

In a very normalized database, you would try to remove any duplicate data being stored in the database. So for e.g. if you see Mango coming in multiple times, you would create a table called Fruits and add fruits to this table.

And when you want to add a fruit to your main table, you would reference it to Fruits table using foreign key. Thus, it will make sure the integrity of table. I mean what if in a country you want to use the application but they call mango a congo. So instead of renaming it's all instance you just have to rename it once because it exists only once and referenced multiple times using the identifier.