Rails - Aug 2008 - How do I create this relationship in Rails? At least...what's the best way?

I have a model, let''s call it an Assessments model.  This model
describes a collection of questions I''m developing to profile a user.
So the first one is maybe a travel assessment.  It consists of a few
questions related to travel.  Another assessment may be a sports
assessment.  This will find out what types of sports/recreational
activities you like through a variety of questions.

Now each assessment has_many questions.  For travel it may be, do you
like warm or cold climates?  Each question has_many Answer Choices,
which may be yes, no, maybe, sometimes, or a variety of other
options.  And then each question will also has_one answer, per user,
that has a FK to the Users table and Question Table.

This should give you an idea of what an assessment is.  Now, each
assessment has a profile.  So the travel assessment will allow the
user to create a travel profile.  And the sports assessment will allow
a sports profile (think online profile or something with descriptions,
interests, etc).

My question is:  How can I model these profiles?  They can''t really
use STI because while there are a few overlapping similarities in the
profiles, I may eventually have 30 assessments and 20 different fields
per profile - so over 600 fields in that one table (with STI).
Polymorphism doesn''t work because I don''t have enough
duplication
between the profiles.  So what can I use?  I''ve thought about creating
a different model for each profile.  Like a TravelProfiles model and a
SportsProfiles model.  But this seems like a lot of programming work
per new assessment added.  Then I thought about adding a ProfileFields
model that will allow you to add a new row for a field and add an
assessment type FK to that table.  The only problem is, how do I deal
with different data types?  Like if one field is a multiple choice,
where should I store the multiple choices?  Or even if it''s a yes/no
question, how do I store that in the database and make use of the data
in the view?

Ugh..sorry, long question!  Thanks for any insight!

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Lefty wrote:
>
> 
> My question is:  How can I model these profiles?  They can''t
really
> use STI because while there are a few overlapping similarities in the
> profiles, I may eventually have 30 assessments and 20 different fields
> per profile - so over 600 fields in that one table (with STI).
> Ugh..sorry, long question!  Thanks for any insight!
I guess I don''t see how the profiles are different from the
assessments.
Just more questions per type?  It may be a drag creating all of those 
profiles and their questions, but I don''t see how the size of that
table
is any concern.  So it has 600 rows in it, no big deal.  Imagine a 
"user" table on a busy site that has been around for awhile; that
table
would have many thousands of rows.

I think you haven''t made your concern clear yet.

thanks,
jp
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