July 19, 201015 yr What's the best way to deal with data that is really only relevant to specific subgroups of an entity? I'm working on a directory of ORGANIZATIONS and PEOPLE. Organizations all have contact info (address, phone, website) and orgtype (e.g., church, school, charity). But some information is only relevant to certain kinds of organizations (e.g., service times for churches, grade levels for schools). I can see three options (TABLES in caps, fields in lowercase). Option 1: ORGANIZATIONS _kp_organization address phone website orgtype grades (blank for non-schools) service times (blank for non-churches) Option 2: CHURCHES _kp_church address phone website service times SCHOOLS _kp_school address phone website grades CHARITIES _kp_charity address phone website OTHER ORGANIZATIONS _kp_org address phone website Option 3: ORGANIZATIONS _kp_organization address phone website orgtype CHURCHES _kf_organization service times SCHOOLS _kf_organization grades Organizations are related to one another organizations (e.g., churches can have schools or charities) as well as to people. Can such relationships be managed better with one of these structures than another? Is there a better structure that I'm not considering?
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