StackOverflow2013

Note that there are some explanatory texts on larger screens.

plurals

PO
primarykey
Id
5314043
data
AcceptedAnswerId
0
AnswerCount
0
ClosedDate
CommentCount
1
CommunityOwnedDate
CreationDate
2011-03-15T15:32:59.297
FavoriteCount
0
LastActivityDate
2011-03-15T15:38:04.667
LastEditDate
2011-03-15T15:38:04.667
LastEditorUserId
329289
OwnerUserId
329289
ParentId
5313713
PostTypeId
2
Score
1
ViewCount
0
LastEditorDisplayName
text
Body
The diagram could be clearer by showing cardinality of the relationships involved. But I get what the design basically is. It's called an "entity-attribute-value" model, aka an "open schema", and it's not an uncommon thing to do in a database. However, you should be aware that there are significant downsides to this approach: <ul> <li>validation of properties and their types by the RDBMS becomes much more difficult</li> <li>queries retrieving property values for a particular entity are more complicated</li> <li>it's harder to reason about that entity using just database queries</li> </ul> In sum, you are going to have to have your application, or maybe stored procedures, do a bunch of work managing these properties, as the database is not going to be able to give you much support besides pure storage and lookup. See <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model</a> for a pretty good rundown on when this design might be a good idea. Also check out <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect</a> on why it might be a bad one. You'll have to decide for your application whether this is the right approach for you. If what you want to do is provide persistence for objects, I should note that this is a problem that object-oriented databases try to solve in a more natural manner. If you're really frustrated by this design, and you're free to look at whatever DBMS might solve the problem, you might look into that.
Tags
Title
singulars
PostAcceptedAnswerId
1. This table or related slice is empty.
PostParentId
1. POHow would I go about designing this in a database
 singulars
 PostTypePostTypeId
 PTQuestion
PostTypePostTypeId
1. PTAnswer
UserLastEditorUserId
1. USOwen S.
UserOwnerUserId
1. USOwen S.
plurals
PostLinksPostIdRelatedPostId
1. This table or related slice is empty.
PostLinksRelatedPostIdPostId
1. This table or related slice is empty.
PostsAcceptedAnswerId
1. POHow would I go about designing this in a database
 singulars
 PostTypePostTypeId
 PTQuestion
PostsParentIdCreationDate
1. This table or related slice is empty.
VotesPostIdCreationDate
1. VO
 singulars
 PostPostId
 PO
 UserUserId
 This table or related slice is empty.
 VoteTypeVoteTypeId
 VTUpMod
2. VO
 singulars
 PostPostId
 PO
 UserUserId
 This table or related slice is empty.
 VoteTypeVoteTypeId
 VTAcceptedByOriginator
CommentsPostId
1. COThis helped significantly. Thank you very much!
 singulars
 PostPostId
 PO
 UserUserId
 UScbattlegear

Querying!

Guidance

A row detail

Detail views are divided into sections. All the information in the data section comes from columns in the selected row. The other sections display data from other, related rows.

Related data can be related in a to-one or a to-many fashion. Captions of data related in a to-many fashion link to a list view showing a filtered view of the table.

Try moving around until you find a non-empty to-many entry and click on the label to get to one. You can move back to the root by clicking on the database name in the header.