Hi there... we have a product information table and layout which shows product information.

 

They are all different products and some have options/data that others do not have...

 

For example we sell washing machines that have a spin speed and load capacity

And we sell fridge freezers that have a cubic capacity but obviusly not a spin speed.

 

What is the best way of showing these specific options so that unused data is not shown?

 

I thought about maybe using a portal that is populated by a calculation depending on what the product is?

 

 

It sound like you have a one-to-many relationship between products and options - so yes, the options should go into a related table. No, there's no need for a calculation here: just link the two tables using ProductID.

 

 

Note that I am ignoring the seeming similarity between "load capacity" of a washing machine and a "cubic capacity" of a freezer as irrelevant to the purposes of your solution.

It sound like you have a one-to-many relationship between products and options - so yes, the options should go into a related table. No, there's no need for a calculation here: just link the two tables using ProductID.

 

 

Note that I am ignoring the seeming similarity between "load capacity" of a washing machine and a "cubic capacity" of a freezer as irrelevant to the purposes of your solution.

 

 

What is the best practise for populating the options table?

Obviously I don't want the user to have to manually enter the option names for every new product they enter so I presume some sort of script that goes ahead and creates the options based on the product type when the product record is created?

You could either import the options from a "bank" kept in another table (say Parameters), or use a portal to the Parameters table in order to create corresponding values in the Options table for the current product. The latter alternative is more suitable when each product type has a fixed set of options.

 

Either way, you should add a ProductTypes table, of which both Products and Parameters will be children.