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and if you should decide one day that you want others besides just you to be able to post? ever visited boing-boing or other similar blogs where there's more than one individual posting? you're saying "no, i don't ever, ever, ever want the option of doing that"?
design for maximum flexibility, my friend
True, true. But that dosen't necessarily mean that I'd want the exact same fields in comments and in posts. I could imagine adding quite a few features to posts that wouldn't be in comments, and then I'd be wasting most of those columns (assuming more comments than posts). Or what if I add features like comment moderation that don't apply to posts? I could see those two types diverging...
i understand your concernOriginally Posted by dalangalma
since you are still in the database design phase, you need to do a quick bit of research on subtypes and supertypes
posts and comments are really two types of the same thing (and the pingtracks would be a third)
some people put all the columns that they have in common into a common table, with separate tables for each type
other people put everything into one table, including all columns required by all types, so that for each row, the columns not required by that type are NULL
"then I'd be wasting most of those columns" is not true, because NULL doesn't take any space
the deciding factor in whether subtypes/supertypes have separate tables or not is the range and complexity of sql necessary to maintain them separately versus in a common table
i tried to give an example of this earlier when i mentioned categorization
if you have a many-to-many relationship from posts to categories, and if your posts are separate from comments, then you're okay, but if you also want a many-to-many relationship between comments and categories, you're screwed, because now any search based on category is twice as complex as it needs to be
i know, i know, you're gonna come back with "but i will never want to categorize the comments, ever"
another example is fulltext search -- if you're looking for certain words and phrases, and youhave separate posts and comments, bingo, your search sql is twice as complex
all i'm saying is you had better know exactly what you want from your database before you create those tables
in my experience, it is a lot easier to do most applications with a common table for subtypes and supertypes, even if you then place other stuff into separate tables as needed
the common table in your example would include category relationships, fulltext fields, date added/changed, ip number, etc. etc.
in fact there are way more common columns between posts and comments than different
but it sounds like you are starting out with no common table on purpose and i am just trying to caution you against that
Hmm. That sounds reasonable...
<reminisce>
I remember a few years back when I first got my copy of kev's book on byoddws and within a week I had built my own blogger. it took in a simple headline, teaser text, body text, and a date. and just for fun I threw in a str_replace function for all my smilies
I thought i was hot stuff back then.
Boy has the times evolved.
</reminisce>
Good luck on building your blog
./with Imagination: Dustin Diaz
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Good thread. Cheers for the debates chaps.
Baz
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why dont you just hire a coder from http://www.rentacoder.com and it will be completed in a minute or day.
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/show...9&postcount=22
See this hierarchy.you insult an entire profession (which includes me) and then withdraw?
i shall wait a few days for you to show me a page with even 5 levels visible, sir
until then, sir, clearly you have lost this round
How many levels do you count? More than 5 ?
hey, nice example!!
sure took you long enough
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