Thread: How to deal with field on the database that stores variable array's?

Hi,

I need to develop a database table that will aceept a variable array field. My doubt is how to deal with updates on the
array field. How can I store the information of the array fields? There any examples on the Internet on how to deal with
this subject?

What I mean with variable array is:


array(
      'name' => 'Don',
      'age'  => '31'
     );


array(
      'name' => 'Peter',
      'age'  => '28',
      'car'  => 'ford',
      'km'   => '2000'
     );


Best Regards,

Hi Andre,

On 01/01/11 12:35 PM, Andre Lopes wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need to develop a database table that will aceept a variable array
> field. My doubt is how to deal with updates on the
> array field. How can I store the information of the array fields?
> There any examples on the Internet on how to deal with
> this subject?
>
> What I mean with variable array is:
>
>
> array(
>       'name' => 'Don',
>       'age'  => '31'
>      );
>
>
> array(
>       'name' => 'Peter',
>       'age'  => '28',
>       'car'  => 'ford',
>       'km'   => '2000'
>      );
>

thats very non-relational, and will make queries and updates very
difficult and messy, as well as making data integrity impossible to enforce.

is there a predetermined number of attributes, even if they may not be
present for a given entry?     I would have a Person table which has all
the fields that most/all persons would have, like persons(id, name, age,
address, phone, etc), then for optional attributes a seperate table for
each attribute collection like car(person_id, brand, model, mileage,...).

--
// Dmitriy.