Which table schema would be better in performance as well as in memory consumption

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I am creating a database to store type of food items a shopkeeper holds in the market.
Data tables are as:

1. For Profile table:
a.SID
b.Name
c.Address

2. Fooditemcodes table:
a.itemid (Pkey)
b.itemname

3. Sellingfooditems table:
a.SID (Pkey)
b.itemid1(datatype:bool. default value:null)
c.itemid2, itemid3,....,itemid n

In table Sellingfooditems most of the fields are going to store null values.
Will it be feasible to use the schema as I mentioned above or a better schema would be like one below:

Sellingfooditems table:
a. SID (Pkey)
b. fooditemid (from table fooditemcodes)

There would'nt be any null values in the schema above but fooditemid will repeat for more than one food item being stored by the same shopkeeper.

Posted 24-Jul-15 3:31am

Member 11040029

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F-ES Sitecore · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-24T03:41:00

Solution 1

Use the second option, the first one is bad design that will give you nothing but problems at every stage.

Posted 24-Jul-15 3:41am

F-ES Sitecore

Comments

Wendelius 24-Jul-15 9:45am

Exactly, 5'd

Member 11040029 25-Jul-15 1:46am

tnx alot!

Wendelius · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-24T03:44:00

Well, in my opinion the latter is the only reasonable solution. You don't want to use columns to store data which is row-type. For example consider:
- how referential integrity is enforced
- what happens if you want to buy same item twice
- what if one of the items needs to be taken away
- what if you need more items than you have columns
- how are you going to effectively make queries over that first structure and so on...