| Walter Lee Davis on 23 Apr 2006 19:40:35 -0000 |
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I have a theory question for you older hands here. Imagine a database of old books, each of which may have one or many authors, editors, translators, co-editors, co-authors, etc., etc. Furthermore, in the universe of people who have performed in these various roles to the collection of books, it is likely that a person has had more than one role. A translator of one title might also be an author or an editor for a different title. I don't want to have to ever re-enter the same person (and all their metadata, like birth date, death date, and especially their bio) just to give them a different role. I also don't want to maintain two separate link tables and three data tables just to describe this many to many to many relationship. What I envision is having a role table, with a role name and two foreign keys, one each for the person_id and the title_id. Any given role would necessarily be entered more than once, but from an interface and data standpoint, I am not so religious about normalization that this bothers me much. Are there any other structures that any of you can suggest? Thanks, Walter _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@phillyonrails.org http://lists.phillyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
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