joealba made the valuable suggestion that you "normalize" your data. If you are not a DB guru this may not mean much. Here is a paper describing the concepts in a fairly readable way. The link takes you into the middle of an article, starting with a section "Why Normalize". You may want to go back to the beginning if you are not familiar with the definitions. There are lots of good articles on the web, but this may help get you started on why and how to normalize. There is also a good collection of info on About. I found the normalization series exceptionally clear.

Regardless of the tool you use, normalization does help. In general, database practice is pretty well evolved. Some techniques may seem like overkill (and some may be), but they may make your overall design and programming task easier.

HTH, --traveler