SQL Server database design for mvc application - sql

Question

I have a requirement where I want to store 5 years amounts divided by months and quarters in database. Its not necessary that all amounts will be filled in for example user can input data for 3 months for 1st year and also can provide amount for all the months in another year.
I came up with following design
Fields = this table is used for saving month names and associated quarter information. data would like as below
FieldId FieldName Quarter
1 Jan q1
2 Feb q1
3 march q1
4 q1total q1
Data
DataId FieldId Amount year
1 1 100 2015
2 2 200 2015
3 3 300 2015
4 4 600 2016
With this approach for every budget information I have to save almost 80 records (5 years data for each month and quarter) in database in worse case.
I would like to know more efficient way to design tables for this requirement.

Answer 1

There's no need to store month name or what quarter it's in -- that can be calculated on the fly by date functions of your database or programming language. I'd get rid of the Fields table completely, drop the year and FieldId fields from the Data table, and then add a basic date field to the Data table. All you need is this:
ID Date Amount
-- ---------- ------
1 2015-01-01 100
2 2015-02-01 200
Then you just add a date span for your where clause. If you want Jan:
SELECT * FROM data WHERE date >= '2015-01-01' AND date < '2015-02-01';
If you want Q1:
SELECT * FROM data WHERE date >= '2015-01-01' AND date < '2015-04-01';
Or (in MySQL, for example):
SELECT * FROM data WHERE YEAR(date) = 2015 AND QUATER(date) = 1; -- Q1 2015
SELECT * FROM data WHERE YEAR(date) = 2015 AND MONTH(date) = 1; -- Jan 2015
Note, I'm guessing you're probably tracking more than one budget. Perhaps one per user or one per department or something. In this case, you'll want an additional field to indicate who or what the record belongs to:
ID UserId Date Amount
-- ------ ---------- ------
1 1 2015-01-01 100
2 1 2015-02-01 200
Or:
ID DepartmentId Date Amount
-- ------------ ---------- ------
1 1 2015-01-01 100
2 1 2015-02-01 200

Answer 2

With this approach for every budget information I have to save almost 80 records (5 years data for each month and quarter) in database in worse case
To be honest - 80, 800 or 8000 records, it doesn't matter much. With that amount of data you don't need to worry about "efficiency", but rather about maintenance and future growth.
You'll want to design it so that it is easy to maintain and easy to change (because it will change). Storing quaters, years and months now might make sense if you want to shave off a nano-second in query time, or want to have an easier query to retrieve the data. But in 1 year, when someone will ask you also get weekly statistics, this design will fail you.
I agree with Alex answer about the design of that particular table. If you store a date you have freedom to use it as you please. But my answer is more of a general note for any table you will create:
Don't get stuck in how to optimize it now, instead try to think ahead and store data with as much detail as possible (unless building a huge database).