I would go for Option 1! KISS. I don't see any problem having 30 cols in a RDBMS.

Option 1
+ fast, you only need one select and one update to write or read one record
+ easy to understand for everybody

Option 2 + 3

- slow
- not intuitive
If you have some required fields and 0...many optional fields for your records, you could also write all the optional field serialised in one row, but then you can't access the optional fields simple with sql.

ciao, knoebi

In reply to Re: (OT) Database design: omitted partially filled fields. by knoebi
in thread (OT) Database design: omitted partially filled fields. by BUU

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