Is this the right way to organize my database tables?
- by Moss
So I'm making a website that allows users to build contact lists. So their are users, the users have lists, and the lists have contacts. It seems to me that I need 3 tables for this but I just want to make sure.
There would be a User table of course, and then a "List of Lists" table that has the username, and listname, as primary key along with whatever other info we want to attach to the lists as a whole. Finally, for lack of a better word, the List table which would again have the username/listname p.k., then the contact ID and notes and such that the user attaches to that contact on that specific list.
I hope that is a clear explanation. For some reason I feel unsure about this arrangement. For one thing if the website becomes popular the List table could swell to billions of rows. And it also feels a little weird that everybody's list info is all jumbled up in the same table. I suppose I could create separate tables for each user and even for each list but that seems like a bad idea for other reasons.
My db explanation assumes I can use foreign keys on my tables which at the moment isn't actually an option. If I can't get InnoDB tables enabled I will probably use ID's for the lists instead of depending on a compound key. Maybe I should do this anyway?
