The design doesn't have to be fancy.. but it does have to be correct. Organizing the data in a normalized way will make it faster, easier to implement, and MUCH easier to extend later.

Always think ahead... *especially* when you are dealing with people in sales. :) Out of 10 projects developed for sales purposes, all 10 of them will want extra functionality after the project is completed. I absolutely guarantee it (or your money back). hehehe

Update: Thought I'd clarify on the "easier to implement" bit. Okay, you'll have to do an extra lookup to match a few keys to their values -- like matching the make_id to the make text string. But, when it comes time to write search code, it's faster and easier to develop a search that does a numerical match, rather than some kind of regexp match on the string!

In reply to Re: Re: Question about properly laying out a database by joealba
in thread Question about properly laying out a database by Stamp_Guy

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