I have a table of users in SQL Server with all the contact details, personal details etc. When each user signs up to my website they will be given the option to opt-in to 5 different types of emails like:
I wish to receive emails about new things
I wish to receive the monthly newsletter
etc etc. I am trying to decide the best way to store this information in a database. My current thinking is to have a seperate table with 5 columns (one for each opt-in) and the value being a bool/bit value.
Since the information wont be required regularly, it will only be required when we want to send mail to user. Are there any better ways / best practices for doing something like this?
The problem with your proposed design is that it becomes difficult to add new email types in the future; you only have 5 now, but what happens when you add a sixth or seventh?.
Instead, I would propose something like:
User Table:
UserID (Primary Key)
User Attributes
EmailTemplate Table
EmailTemplateID (Primary key)
Email Template Attributes
UserEmailTemplates
UserID
EmailTemplateID
You can easily add new templates, and associate them with users.
Related
I'm currently making website for selling stuff and my system requires some specific user rank's to have workers under them. So i was thinking if it could be possible to make some database design like this ( See picture below) and add user_id with worker_id (foreign keys pointing to user_id key) and then retrieve through a query how many workers a user has.
Adding a picture to understand my idea.
Thanks.
Is it better to create tables that store a lot of data that are related to an entity (User for example) or many tables to store said data?
For example:
User Table
Name
Email
Subscription Id
Email Notifications
Permissions
Or
User Table
Name
Email
Subscription Table
User ID
Subscription ID
Notification Table
User ID
Receives?
... etc
Please consider code in this as well, or I would have posted to ServerVault.
From a relational design standpoint what is important is the normal form you're aiming for. In general, if the "column" would require multiple values (subscription_id1, subscription_id2, etc) then it is a repeating group, and that would indicate to you that it needs to be moved to a related table. You've provided very general table and column notes, but taking a cue from the fact that you named "Email Notifications" and "Permissions" with plurals, I'm going to assume that those require related tables.
I would like to make a model agency based on codeigniter, but im a but stuck with the database, exactly the registration part.
I would like to allow users to sign up as, model, photohgrapher, agency, or make-up artist.
So could someoone give me an opinion how to make the database? Like seperate the models, photographers, agencies, and artists in diferent tables, and at the registration form only ask for baseic info? like name, password, email, D.O.B., or there is a nother way?.
Thank you
You should use entity sub-typing with a parent type of "USER", which will contain your basic information, and with sub-types of "MODEL", "AGENCY", "PHOTOGRAPHER", "MAKEUP_ARTIST". This will allow you to have a better user experience for the inevitable case where there is overlap. I'm sure there are photographers who have agencies and agencies that do make-up etc. It would be much better for these types of users to have a single user ID and password despite having different types of profiles.
Make a drop down for different type of people signing up which the data for drop down comes from a separate table (e.g. person_type) from database and save the basic details of the person in separate table with the ID of the person_type table.
You can make a model for getting, inserting and updating records for this purpose.
A user can turn on or off
notification settings for his
account, for notifications such as
Changed Account Profile Information,
Received New Message etc
Notification can be sent via email or mobile phone (either push or sms), user can have 1 email only and many mobile phone devices.
Is there any way you would improve the following database design or would you do it differently?
let me know thanks
USER_NOTIFICATION_SETTING
Id
UserId
Notification_SettingCode
NotificationTypeCode
UserDeviceId -- the mobile deviceid
IsEnabled -- true (notification is on), false (notification is off)
NOTIFICATION_SETTING
Code - e.g 1001, 1002
Name -- e.g Changed Account Profile Information, Received New Message etc
NOTIFICATION_TYPE
Code - e.g 1001, 1002
Name -- e.g Email, SMS, Push
USER_DEVICE -- the mobile phone device information
etc...etc...
Or maybe this one which propagates natural keys. This has wider tables, but requires less joins. For example, you can get notifications for a UserName directly from the NotificationQueue.
Or this one, which is good enough if you have phone and email only. So far the simplest -- I think that currently I like this one the best.
What you've done looks pretty good actually. I would out of personal preference do the following:
Eliminate the UserId column on User_Notification_Setting as it should already be on your User_Device table
Get rid of the _s in your table names
Change the Code fields in Notification_Setting and Notification_Type to be Id (even if they are not Identity columns) and then change the foreign key references from other tables to have a more consistent NotificationTypeId field name.
Eliminate the IsEnabled field. The fact that a record exists at the intersection should suffice for having the notification. Deletion of that record means that there is no notification. I can see why you might want to remember that a notification was there at one time and maybe have it there to easily re-enable but I see no information stored at the intersection so deletion is just as good.
Looks good, only a few minor suggestions:
Naming of code fields, use table name then _Code
Add a notification for all changes
There are a couple of things I do not agree with Tahbaza on:
I would leave the user id in, it is then faster to get all notifications for a user
I would leave the isEnabled in, it is then possible to temporarily stop all notifications
I'm a noob, development wise and logistically-wise.
I'm developing a site that lets people take a test...
My client wants the ability for a user with the roll/privledge "admin" (a step below a super-admin) to be allowed to create users and only see/edit the users that they create...
The users created in that "category" or group need some information that their superior provides.
For example, I log in as a "manager", I have the ability to invite people to take the test, and manage those people. Before adding those people, I will have filled out a short survey about myself...
Right now, the users that are invited will be asked some of the same questions as the manager. I'd like to cut down the redundancy by using the information put into the database by the manager and apply it to the invited users.
How do I set up my database to work with this criterion? I'm a little confused about how to do this! Let me know if I can add more details...
(This is a mysql and php app)
I am sure there are several ways to do this but here is one that comes to mind.
In the "users" database, I am sure you have a column to specify which manager is assigned to the user by some kind of user key. Well If this field has a value, then pull the info from that users (manager user) record.
Example:
table 'users'
key----name------managerid-----questionone------questiontwo----
1-------randy-----0------------------california----------c++--------------
2-------bob--------1------------------nevada------------------------------
Since record(key)1 has managerid == 0 then use questiontwo record to answer "Question 2".
Since record(key)2 has managerid == 1 then pull questiontwo from record(key)1 and use that for answer to question two.
You could either insert this information into the record or use it from the manager record dynamically as needed, which thought the space is still being used in the database, would be helpful since manager data might be updated and you might not want to have to update all records with that share the managerid wheh info is changed.
Make sense?