4 or 1?

[rivet]

Working on a simple form builder. This will act as a preference to what type of items belong on a form depending on the event type and form.

section (events)

section_type (fund raiser, members dinner)

form (proposal, claim)

form_Item (field1, field2, etc. )

The question is, since the will only be a few records (100 maybe) would you just make this a single table with a bunch of self relationships, or four tables?

SINGLE TABLE

id

id_parent

name

type

[Rick Whitelaw]

The question, at least for me, is unclear. Perhaps you could repost it.

[rivet]

no worries, I was thinking of reducing 4 tables into 1, but its just back practice. I must have been tired. Thanks

[Ron Cates]

I don't quite understand the question either but if it's a question of multiple tables or one maybe we could use people as an example. You may have Students, Teachers, Parents and so on. But ultimately they are all people. So rather than having tables for Students, Teachers, Parents and so on they can all be included in one table of people where each record has a field such as type that would indicate what type of person they are. So in your case. If the 4 tables all hold data that is essentially the same then yes you may want to go with one table with a type field to detirmine the difference.

[rivet]

Yes that was the idea. And for people I could see it working well, but for my tables only the structure (id, name, id_parent) would be common. I will look at it again. Thanks