Re: How to deal with field on the database that stores variable array's?

On 01/01/11 12:35 PM, Andre Lopes wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need to develop a database table that will aceept a variable array
> field. My doubt is how to deal with updates on the
> array field. How can I store the information of the array fields?
> There any examples on the Internet on how to deal with
> this subject?
>
> What I mean with variable array is:
>
>
> array(
> 'name' => 'Don',
> 'age' => '31'
> );
>
>
> array(
> 'name' => 'Peter',
> 'age' => '28',
> 'car' => 'ford',
> 'km' => '2000'
> );
>

thats very non-relational, and will make queries and updates very
difficult and messy, as well as making data integrity impossible to enforce.

is there a predetermined number of attributes, even if they may not be
present for a given entry? I would have a Person table which has all
the fields that most/all persons would have, like persons(id, name, age,
address, phone, etc), then for optional attributes a seperate table for
each attribute collection like car(person_id, brand, model, mileage,...).