Best practice normalization database?

[tfit]

I spend to much time figuring out how to do my normalization. It needs to get implemented soon. In fact I'm too late already. I have to make a site which has daily items and subitems accessed through the main page. However not all of the subitems will be update daily. I have tree possible solutions, but I have alot of repeating data or empty cells. Can someone offer me to a better solution?


Solution 1: problem empty cells

---------------------------------------------------------
|date	  |home  |  rites   |  maidens| tedeum | triumph |
---------------------------------------------------------
|20080402 |xxbx  |	    |  cccx   |	       | xxxyxx  |
|20080403 |xxrx  |	    |  xxcx   | bbbbbx | 	 |
|20080404 |xxxx  |  bbbxx   |  cccxx  | bbbx   | 	 |
|20080405 |xxcxx |  xxxyxx  |  xxxcx  |	       | xxxxy	 |
---------------------------------------------------------

solution 2: problem repeating data, many tables note: just 3 tables listed

----------------------  
|date	  |	home |	  
---------------------- 
|20080402 |	xxbx|	
|20080403 |	xxrx|	 
|20080404 |	xxxx|	 
|20080405 |	xxcx|	 
----------------------  

----------------------  
|date	  |	rites |	       
 ----------------------- 
|20080404 |	bbbxx |	 
|20080405 |	xxxyxx|	  
----------------------  

-------------------------
|date	  |	maidens |
-------------------------
|20080402 |	cccx	|
|20080403 |	xxcx	 |
|20080404 |	cccxx	|
|20080405 |	xxxcx	|
-------------------------

solution 3: problem again repeating data
------------------                  
|id|	name	 |	               
------------------                   
|1 |	home	 |	               
|2 |	rites	 |	                 
|3 |	maidens	 |	               
|4 |	tedeum	 |	               
|5 |	triumph	 |	                
|----------------|	              

---------------------------------
|id|	    date   |	   title|
---------------------------------
|1 |	   20080402|	  xxbx	|
|3 |       20080402|	  cccx  |
|5 |	   20080402|	  xxxyxx|
|1 |	   20080403|	  xxrx	|
|3 |	   20080403|	  xxcx  |
|4 |	   20080403|	  bbbbbx|
|1 |	   20080404|	  xxxx	|
|2 |	   20080404|	  bbbxx	|
|3 |	   20080404|	  cccxx	|
|4 |	   20080404| 	  bbbx	|
|1 |	   20080405|	  xxcxx	|
---------------------------------

sorry about the wiggling

[boogyman]

telling us the foreign keys between the tables would be helpful for future reference, however generally if you have a table that has alot of repeating string data, it is possible that you might want to create a new table and use a unique identifier and have a field for the unique string

for instance... if you have a list of users, and you have multiple users at 1 company, it is possible that you should have a separate companies table and use the "company_id" in the user table.

if you are worried about having a repeating date, do not worry about that. it's really not that big of a deal

[ghostsquad]

I agree. It's not that big of a deal until you get 100's or 1000's of records. Getting to know 2nd normalization is a good idea though, 3rd normalization is almost of waste of time, and can actually make things more complicated and decrease performance.

check this out:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/...alization.html

[tfit]

Thanks,
So can I interpreter this that repeating values is better than empty cells?

[boogyman]

Thanks,
So can I interpreter this that repeating values is better than empty cells?

yes and no... it depends on the data.
date cells repeating = okay
string cells you wish to index (search) = not okay for either
article titles repeating = okay
article content repeating = better empty

if you give us a general overview of your system we can let you know what would be worth normalizing and what would be okay to have a (possible) empty cell

[tfit]

I've come up with this and I think it's a practical design

stories         style        pre_proc       header
--------------------------------------------
cat_id         style_id     prep_id         cat_id
title            style_dt    prep_dt         category
text
style_id
prep_id
date
allow

And three rows of stories database will look something like this

1 - news of today - some text - 1 - 3 - 20080408 - y
3 - eeepc rocks - sme other text - 2 -3 - 20080408 - y
1 - news of tomorrow - text -1 -3 -20080409 - n