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I have a database to store the news of my website. The news entity type is associated with two different ones; images (which from the point of view of the app users are grouped in a gallery) and categories.

To represent this situation this, I have some tables like this:

image
id | src

category
id | name

news
id | title | text | author | ...

It is important to mention that each news may have multiple images and belong to multiple categories. So, to create the relationship between images, categories and news, I'll use another table, but my question is:

Should I have (a) two tables (one for image rows and other for category rows) or (b) just one with multiple columns? For example:

(a) Two distinct tables, one called news_relationship_category, with the column headings

id | id_news | id_category

and another one, named news_relationship_gallery set up as follows

 id | id_news | id_gallery

(b) One single table, entitled news_relationships with the headings

id_news | id_category | id_gallery

and INSERT INTO it rows with some columns that accept NULL marks, for instance:

10 | NULL | 3
---+------+------
10 | 27   | NULL
---+------+------

These are simple examples, but imagine if I have an e-commerce table, with products involved in multiple relationships. What is the best way to approach this case?

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    If your news can have 3 categories and 4 images, use the second approach. Is the one that best represents your situation. And don't use id. Use id_news, id_gallery and id_category all the time. It's far more clear. Your new_relation_category does not need an id for itself: it's just (id_news, id_category). – joanolo Feb 2 '17 at 23:30
  • I forgot to mention that each news may have multiple images and multiple categories. So you mean I should have one relational table for each area? One for gallery and one for category? @joanolo – CelsomTrindade Feb 2 '17 at 23:32
  • That's it: one for gallery and one for category. (This, obviously, assumes that galleries and categories are, in principle, not directly related; meaning you don't have one gallery per category). – joanolo Feb 2 '17 at 23:34
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    And you may want a category:gallery relationship? Hence, a 3rd table? – Rick James Feb 3 '17 at 1:18
  • Sketch out the SELECTs you will be doing -- they may provide your answer ! – Rick James Feb 3 '17 at 1:19
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To delete a news-category pair in schema B, you have to do either a DELETE or an UPDATE depending on whether the relevant row has id_gallery specified or not. How about inserts, are you going to just INSERT or check first for rows with nulls to UPDATE?

So, I strongly recommend option A. However, I would drop the surrogate id columns and use (id_news, id_category) and (id_news, id_gallery) as PK.

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