I have a small database where most of my tables have a duplicate table whose sole purpose is to hold default data. For example I have "tableA" and "default_TableA" and default_TableA may have the following values:
default_TableA
id | name
----------
1 | John
2 | Mark
The purpose of this is so that values can be added to tableA and in the event that I need to reset tableA to the default values, I can clear it then copy the values from default_TableA.
My question is if there is a better way to get this done or if it's better for the application to store the default values somewhere and then insert them into the table when needed?
My apologies if my question isn't clear or if it's already been asked. I wasn't sure how to google this question and what I've found doesn't really answer my question. If you have a link to similar question that's already been answered I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks
Related
I am working on a multi-choice questions web-app. A user will have to answer 50 to 100 multiple-choice questions. The number of possible answers for each question can differ from 3 to 4 but there is only 1 correct answer.
I would like to create a page stats where the user can come back to the answered questions and see what answer he did select. I am not sure what would be the proper way to do that.
So far I have:
users table
questions table
answers table
I would organize the answers table like this:
In that way:
you will not have columns with null values,
you can have questions with more than 3-4 answers too without adding any extra column
you can have questions with multiple right answers too
Then, you will need a table, which holds the user's answers:
Now, you can easily construct a query, which shows the required data.
I'm working with the craziest file format I've seen. It is fixed width, and contains multiple record types (in the sense that each row may have different columns and widths). There's a file header, trailer, and then a static number of rows that when put together make up one record. The problem I'm having is that there is nothing in the rows that tell you they belong to the same record other than their sort order and a row number attribute.
Example:
001 David Wellingsworth Mr.
002 312-555-5555 3060 W Maple St. Chicago
001 Jimothy Bogendath Dr.
002 563-555-5432 123 Main St. Davenport
My question is therefore: is it possible, without using a Script Component, to process a file like this? I understand the basic concept of how to handle disparate record types in a fixed width file (making use of conditional splits and substrings), but I can't get past how to join up all this data after the splits if the rows don't have identifiers.
If it helps, my question is basically this previous question but in reverse.
Possible but with some work. I've worked with data like these and this was our approach on how we solved them.
You will need to build a table that will give them their own unique RecordID
Create another table for your Files to log in your filename and unique fileID
Link your fileID to the RecordID so you know which file each record came from
Build all your sub tables linking to each unique RecordID
Building your tables this way will give you:
Unique recordID for each row (though there maybe duplicate in the file, in your tables they are unique).
Knowing which file each record comes from.
I've some doubts about my database design. I've four tables that follow the following rules:
One form can have many questions (0..n).
One form can have many responses (0..n).
A question belongs to one form (1).
A response belongs to one form (1).
A response have many anwers to a question (Answer table) (0..n).
An Answer belongs to an specific question of a form(1).
The design has led to a circular looking dependency graph like the following:
Form <------------------------------- Question
^ ^
| |
| |
Response <---------------------------- Answer
Can anyone help me? Thanks for all.
The approach seems wrong. "One form can have many questions. One form can have many answer. An answer belongs to one form."
No, an answer should refer to a specific question. If a question belongs to a form, then the answers do belong to that form implicitly, but only indirectly, because they belong to a question.
It boils down to:
One form can have many questions.
One question can have many answers.
In the form of tables:
table form (form_id, ...)
table question (question_id, question_text, ..., form_id)
table answer (answer_id, answer_text, ..., question_id)
UPDATE according to latest request edit:
So you have forms, questions and aswers as shown above. Additionally you want to store the responses. A response contains several answers and some statistics.
table response (response_id, form_id, submit_time, ...)
table response_answer (response_id, answer_id)
Ok, so I need some SQL 101 assistance. I am building a new table in SQL that will be used in a VPN connection to an outside source. I have built a view inside of SQL that contains all the information I need from the main database for this new table. I now need to push the data into the table. The problem is that the data is constantly changing and I am not really sure what my easiest way to do this is. I need to be able to copy the data from the view to the table initially but after that I need to be able to update already existing records with new information and insert new records into the table that don't already exist.
Now, the reason I am not just using the view to deal with the data needed through the VPN is because the outside source that will be using the data needs to be able to push back some values that don't exist anywhere in my table and save them to the unique records they are associated with. When I do the update, I need to leave those values that are pushed back alone and just update the values that already exist in my database.
I hope this makes sense as I need some guidance on how to do this as I have not done this before.
The table for this looks like this:
ID Name Address Email X Y Z<br>
123456 John Smith 123 Any St john#d.com 123 12 1125
X Y & Z are the fields that will be filled from an outside source which will be tied to the ID number of the record from the web service.
Thanks for the assistance
I am designing an online math quiz for a college project and having some trouble with designing my database.
The basic idea of the website is as follows:
A teacher, once registered may log in and add questions to their account. They can choose between making the questions multiple choice OR true or false. They can also choose between making their questions public or private. (If they choose to make the questions public, other teachers may view the questions.)
At any time the teacher may create a quiz for their students using the questions in their private bank and / or questions from the public bank. Each question may be used in multiple quizzes.
The idea is that the students will later log in and do the quiz; their answers are stored and the teacher can generate reports and check how the students did individually / highest and lowest scoring questions etc.
I am having some trouble deciding how to store the quizzes and questions which I hope somebody may be able to help me with.
So far I have the following:
‘Question’ table with attributes: QuestionID, SubjectArea, Concept, QuestionText, TeacherID, QuestionType, PublicYorN
‘MCQuestions’ table with attributes: QuestionID, AnsA, AnsB, AnsC, AnsD, AnsE, CorrectAns
‘TorFQuestions’ table with attributes: QuestionID, CorrectAns
‘Quiz’ table with attributes: QuizID, CreationDate, TeacherID
I think I then need another table as follows:
‘QuizQuestions’ and the only attributes will be QuizID, QuestionID which together make a concatenated primary key.
I feel like I should have a separate table to store answers to questions and I'm not sure if I need to separate true or false questions and multiple choice questions as I have done above.
(Obviously there are other tables containing user data etc. but this is the part I’m concerned with.)
Any advice / input is greatly appreciated!
A simple yet flexible design would be something like this:
Questions table (id, text, correct answer id, all the other question related data)
Answers table (id, question id text, all the other answer related data)
Quiz table (id, text, all the other quiz related data)
Quiz questions table (quiz id, question id, question display order, other related data such as question weight might also be added)
Quiz results table (quiz id, question id, answer id, user id, all the other related data such as date of answer and such).
I think my only input to this open ended question is:
Combine MCQuestions and TorF Questions to have a different format. Answers table has 4 cols. QID, AnswerID,answer,Correct Y/N.
Then a true or false question has 2 rows - eg. QID=888, AID=1,Ans=TRUE,true. Next row is QID=888, AID=2,Ans=FALSE,false.
Multiple choice has several - so which is the bright yellowy thing? QID=889, AID=3,Ans=Moon,false. QID=889, AID=4,Ans=Sun,true. QID=889, AID=5,Ans=Mars,false.
Then you grab a list of answers and can populate a set of radio buttons with the QID and AID values. Then you are matching integers in your code rather than long text strings which will need to be passed around for matching. Might make it a bit easier in case of special chars in the answers or whatever and you're matching the quiz results to a unique key.
Apart from that minor change it's difficult to help without knowing any other constraints...
Nick