Just some loose remarks:

- What dbms will you be using? SQL implementations aren't so uniform that it does not matter (and in such a small db interoperability is probably unimportant?).

- It seems unwise to name a table with 'index' or an '_index' suffix. An index belongs to a table but it is something separate (it isn't even part of the SQL specification; indexes are just an implementation detail that may or may not speed up a retrieval from a table).

- The data you describe are so small (hundreds of rows) that performance and indexes are unlikely to be important considerations (small tables are always seqscanned). Concentrate on getting easy-to-understand queries.

- Your option 2 (everything in one table) is called EAV and is generally frowned upon (see for instance this). I think eav is only defensible when a 'table structure' needs to be extremely flexible (and the structure is unknown beforehand), and this is not the case for you).

Maybe you should try to show us the SQL-'hairiness' that you fear. It probably isn't as bad as you think :)

In reply to Re: OT - SQL choosing a schema for index tables by erix
in thread OT - SQL choosing a schema for index tables by bangor

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