Hi,
I have tried two db designs and both can work but I wonder which one
the Rails Gurus would go with. This is a general db design question
that has cropped up in a few situation. Here is the example I''ve been
working on.
In an online store, categories has_and_belongs_to_many images and
products has_and_belongs_to_many images. The db has the basic three
tables
categories
- id
- name
products
- id
- name
images
- id
- filename
What I can''t decide on is how to do the join tables.
Option 1 - would have many join tables and require many join models.
(The join models are to use the position field for acts_as_list to
order the images)
categories_images
- category_id
- image_id
images_products
- product_id
_ image_id
Option 2 - have a one generic join table and only one join model
image_joins
- owner_class
- owner_id
- image_id
In option 2 a record could be (Category, 2, 3) or (Product, 4, 1)
--------
Option 1 seems simpler but could lead to some repetitive code (at
least in the data base definition).
Option 2 is a little more complicated and I don''t know how it fits
into the normalization stuff.
How do I choose?
Thanks,
Peter
