This is the first time I use DynamoDB. I have a question about how to organize my tables.
I own a table containing users, I will have words associated with those users.
Should I create a property with an array in the user or a new table? I will also have a history of the words searched by each user and I also have the same doubt.
What determines which way to go?
Related
I'm very new to FileMaker currently working on a Mac. I've been assigned a new simple system to work towards completing and I have bumped into some issues with database relationships. I've got experience with PHP/MySQL databases connections etc. but FileMaker seems to require a somewhat different mindset and approach.
I'll try to explain this as simply as I can.
Here's the table relationships in my database
What I'm trying to do is a list of "to-do" notes, an interactive menu where the user can add things that needs to be done. I've done this with a portal on a layout based on the table "site". The portal is based on the table "todo_notes", which is connected to site through the "site_id".
Here's what it looks like in browse mode
What I'm having problems with is adding a relationship between the todo_notes and contacts. The contacts are two separate tables called "county_contacts" and "property_owner_contacts". What I want to accomplish is the possibility for the user to, from a dropdown-list, add a single contact from these two tables. Preferably I'd like to sort of merge these two tables into the same dropdown-list.
Let me know if you need any other information or a better explanation of my issue. Any help is very welcome!
If you have a single contacts table with foreign keys for both county and property owner tables, that would let you have a single list for all contacts. From there you could also build a value list based on a relationship, for example to filter only contacts that belong to either county or property owners.
If you then need to further normalize the tables, fields that pertain to either relationship exclusively could be moved to another table from there, as a one to one relationship, if that is a concern.
The Short Answer
You need to create a Contacts table. Filemaker has no way of dynamically generating value lists. Instead, you can base a value list on any field, therefore, the only way of generating a list of the contact names would be if they were all in the same table.
The Long Answer
Because Filemaker only allows us to use ONE field for a value list, we must create a new table for the contact. I would recommend that you replace the two contact tables with a single contact table,(seeing as the fields look the same between the two tables) and then add a toggle on the contact for Owner or County. However, you could also create a single contact table for all of the fields that overlap that has foreign keys to the owner and county tables.
You would then use the fullname field from the contact and be good to go.
That is, assuming that you did not want to filter the contacts at all or only show contacts associated with this site.
To start with, I highly recommend using the Anchor-buoy method for organizing the relationship graph. Here's an explanation of the anchor-buoy method: http://sixfriedrice.com/wp/six-fried-rice-methodology-part-2-anchor-buoy-and-data-structures/ . It's just a convention, but will help you with the idea of context in FileMaker. It's widely accepted among the FileMaker community as the "right" way to organize a relationship graph. I will continue my explanation using this method.
Each Table Occurrence (the boxes in the graphs, or TO) represents a unique context from which you can view and edit information. In the anchor buoy method, each Table only has one "anchor" TO. I would recommend only using anchor TO's for the context of your layouts. Then, your portal, and any other corresponding information, will be on your buoy TO's. Here is what your new portal relationship would look like. You would select fields from your buoy TO's to use in the portal.
The easiest way to filter your value list by only contacts associated with this site would be to create a foreign key from the contact table to the site, and then add a TO to the graph, for the contact table. You would then click "Include only related values starting from" radio button, and specify your new TO.
So im working on a side project involving the Steam API and I am not sure if this would be a suitable and effective way to do what I want.
Basically I have a User model with an inventory field relating to a certain game. I fetch the Users game inventory when they log-in and store the json result within this single field. I have another model which contains the item schema for every item in the game.
Basically I want to relate the information stored within the database for a particular item(item model) to that items information within the json result(inventory items).
I previously tried to save the inventory in a separate table and created a relation between the user, user-inventory and items in this table however the problem with this was ensuring that the inventory stored in my database was the same as that fetched (exactly identical). Under this scenario I would basically need to delete(multiples may exists of the same item) every inventory item and then insert the inventory items retrieved at login back in.
My question is this. Is this an appropriate solution, bad practice or is there a better way to do what i need?
Thanks
Are you sure that you have to delete all of the inventory items and re-add the new ones? Could you iterate through each of the inventory entries and add/update/delete as needed?
I think that the JSON solution would work. It's probably a matter of preference at this point. I always feel like it's nicer to stay with a traditional relational data structure until you really need to optimize. But I don't see why the json wouldn't work. You can create a utility function on your user model that extracts the item ids and fetches all of the related records.
I was wondering how to set up a database for storing actions people recently done when they travel. For example, if they go to a museum, the database will store this text "Bob went to this museum" and store the user id and timestamp. I was wondering if these events should be stored in just one table, and if I want the events of a single person I will just query this table with a user id.
On a similar note I want to store 50 users the user has "recently met" meaning the last 50 users the userhas been around in their travels. I was thinking this could be stored in one table as well, with just user IDs being paired with no duplicates. I'm just afraid the table might get too big.
Any suggestions on table set up?
Thanks
Personally I would go with an ER structure like this:
I am trying to implement a system on my website similar to that of Facebook's "Like" feature. Where users can click a button which counter++'s. However, I have run into a problem in terms of efficiently storing data into my DB.
Each story has it's own row in the stories table in my DB with the columns like and users_like.
I want each person to only be able to like the story once. Therefore I need to somehow store data that shows that the user has, in fact, like++'d the post.
All I could thing of was to have a column named users_like and then add each user, followed by a comma, to the column using CONCAT and then using the php function to explode the data.
However, this method, as far as I know, is in the opposite direction of database normalization.
What is the best way to do this and I understand "best" is subjective.
I cannot add a liked flag to the user table because there will be a vast number of stories the person could 'like.'
Thanks
You need a many to many table in your database that will store a foreign key to the stories table and a foreign key to the user table. You put a constraint on this table saying that the story fk - user fk combo must be unique.
You now don't even have to have a like column, you just count the number of rows in the many to many table corresponding to your story.
I am working on a project in which I have generated a unique id of a customer with the customer's Last name's first letter. And stored it in a database in different tables as if customer's name starting with a then the whole information of the customer will stored in Registration_A table. As such I have created tables of Registration up to Z. But retrieving if data with such structure is quiet difficult. can you suggest me another method to save data so that retrieving become more flexible?
Put all of your registration data into one table. There's absolutely no need for you to break it into alphabetical pieces like that unless you have some serious performance issues.
When querying for registration data, use SQL's WHERE clause to narrow down your results.
You have to merge this to one table ´Registration´, then let the database care about unique ids. This depends on your database, but searching for PRIMARY KEY or AUTO INCREMENT should give you lots of results.
If you have done the the splitting because of performance reasons, you can add a Index on the users last name.