Re: Developing a dating service!

Sunny, > I've read about database normalisation and using seperate > tables interlinked so that information can be categorised. > Should I be using this? Any relevant links / articles? Yes, normalisation is a must, to reduce data size and increase flexibliity. There are loads of books on this subject. > Can people please offer me advice on possible pitfalls as > well as the database design tips which I can use for such a > service?? One thing I wish I had known before starting a database project: Give all the fields in all tables a unique name. eg create table regested_users { rus_userid, rus_username,rus_passwd } create bought_item { bit_itemid, bit_rususerid, ... } now when you use: select rus_username from bought_item where rus_userid = bit_rususerid and bit_itemid = 24; you do not have to alias the tables to get the correct fields > ANY help would be appreciated!! Download a program called phpMyAdmin which is a web front-end to MySQL - striaght forward and simple to use. Just a couple of things to thing about. David.