Re: [Nolug] Database design

s/offel/offal/ .. boy, I screwed that joke up :)

Brett

On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 04:33:09PM -0500, B. Estrade wrote:
> Wouldn't it be "Aunt Sue's God Offel Cobbler"?
>
> Sorry, not helpful :)
>
> If I am reading your question properly, you should probably do something like:
>
> tbl_recipe
> id
> name
> description
> vomit_factor
>
> tbl_ingredients // really more like a ingredients-to-recipe table
> id
> fk_recipe_id
> measure
> unit
> comment
>
> Brett
>
> On Mon, Jul 13, 2009 at 04:26:45PM -0500, Chris Jones wrote:
> > I might be working on a database-driven app pretty soon, but have a
> > question on what might be the best approach for database design.
> >
> > Let's say you're doing something like a recipe database. You would
> > have multiple recipes, obviously. I'm just trying to figure out the
> > best way to do the table layout.
> >
> > Each recipe would look like this:
> >
> > Aunt Sue's God Awful Cobbler
> > =======================
> > 2 cups flour
> > 3 eggs
> > 2 cups sugar
> > 3 lbs of tripe
> >
> > Mix all ingredients, throw in the oven at 400F for 30 minutes. Eat. Vomit.
> >
> >
> > So, you are storing various types of information on each recipe, such
> > as the recipe's name, the directions on how to make it, but then you
> > have an ingredients list, which would essentially have to be a 2D
> > array. It would store the # of units, the unit type, and what exactly
> > the ingredient is...times however many ingredients that particular
> > recipe would have. That's where a bigger part of the problem comes
> > in, that each recipe could have 3 ingredients, or 20.
> >
> > I'm not sure if you should just have a ton of columns of data for your
> > recipe table to accomodate for all the possible ingredients.
> >
> > My own wisdom of database design says that's probably a bad idea.
> >
> > So, should I just have an ingredients table that looks like this:
> > (first column is an ID number corresponding to the recipe it is for)
> >
> > 1, 2, cups, flour
> > 1, 3,, eggs
> > 1, 2, cups, sugar
> > 1, 3, lbs, tripe
> > 2, 1, cups, flour
> > 2, 3, tsp, vanilla
> > 2, 2, cups, sugar
> >
> > And that is basically ALL ingredients of ALL recipes, then you just do
> > a SELECT WHERE ID = 1 to pull all the items for recipe # 1.
> >
> > Is that the way to go for that sort of database? Or is there yet
> > another way that would be even better?
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Received on 07/13/09