Storing Different Products and Joining on table Names

Question

I am setting up a database using mysql to store different products with different product types.

For example I could have Books, Software and clothes etc.

What I am think of is creating a parent table (product_table with the structure:

ID |TYPE|

Then Having a TYPE table which would be:

ID |TYPE |Product_ identifier_Table

So then the Product_ identifier_Table would contain the name of the table the which contains the product details.

Would this be the correct way of setting up the database?

Answer 1

I'm not sure why you need different tables for different product details. I'm going to guess though, that it's because your product types are so different that they have very different attributes (clothing will have sizes: S, M, L whereas books will have have an indicator of hardcover vs. paperback, etc...). You might want to try a more generic solution, where you have a table of product attribute types and another table of attributes. Something like this:

product
-------
  product_id
  name

product_attribute_type
----------------------
  attribute_type_id
  attribute_type_name

product_attribute
-----------------
  product_attribute_id
  attribute_type_id (FK to product_attribute_type)
  product_id (FK to product)
  value

Then you can have data that looks like this

product
-------
ID | name
-----------
1  | Awesome pants
2  | Book of cool stuff
3  | 1337 software

product_attribute_type
----------------------
ID | attribute_type_name
------------------------
1  | waist size
2  | number of pages
3  | system requirements
4  | inseam

product_attribute
-----------------
attribute_type_id | product_id | value
--------------------------------------
1                 | 1          | 33 inches
4                 | 1          | 34 inches
3                 | 3          | Win7, 4 GB RAM
2                 | 2          | 703 pages

Getting info on a product is easy:

select product.name, product_attribute.value, product_attribute_type.name
from product
inner join product_attribute on product.product_id = product_attribute.product_id
inner join product_attribute_type on product_attribute_type.attribute_type_id = product_attribute.attribute_type_id
where product.product_id = $PRODUCT_ID;