I'm fairly new to sqlite and from my understanding you can't store individual tables per row of a current table. Due to that, would it than be acceptable to have a table that has greater than 50+ columns or would it be best to split the columns into more tables?
To get where I'm coming here's a simplified concept of what I'm trying to create:
A table called History stores the data, user weight, and a foreign id referencing the exercise table.
In the exercise table there are columns
Workout-1-Name, Workout-1-Weight, Workout_1_MAX_SET,Workout_1_SET_1.,.,..,..Workout_1_SET_8
and this repeats for Workout_2 - Workout_5. As you can see it will be pretty long(Around 50 columns).
I was thinking of just creating separate tables for Workouts 1-5 but since they're all workouts wouldn't it make sense to just store them all in one table?
Also, is there a cleaner way to do this? Writing all of this out in java seems messy even with static names.
Thanks, appreciate any responses.
Related
I am making an android app (my first) to record gym workouts but I am not sure on how to best structure the database for storing this data.
I want to be able to store:
A list of exercises and their properties
A list of workouts and their properties (containing exercises)
A list of logged workouts (workout and date of workout)
All the set data from each logged workout (exercise, number of sets, weight of each set, reps of each set)
I have drawn up the following schema for how I thought this could be implemented:
My main questions are:
Is it optimal to store all the individual set log data in a single table (Log Entries)?
Should the Exercise Type and Equipment tables be separate or just columns in the Exercise Table? Same goes for Workout Type
Would this be a good approach in terms of performance/usability?
Thanks!
Is it optimal to store all the individual set log data in a single
table (Log Entries)?
In all likeliehood yes, the exception would be if the number of rows grew to adversely impact response times.
Should the Exercise Type and Equipment tables be separate or just
columns in the Exercise Table? Same goes for Workout Type
They should be separate to reduce unnecessary duplication and issue e.g. if you were to change a type or and equipment then you'd have to apply that change to all rows in the exercise table with a separate table you just have to make the one change.
Would this be a good approach in terms of performance/usability?
With the exception of the Log table (as it stands including wanting the date) then it appears to be a good and efficient approach. The Log table isn't needed as the Log Entries table has a column for the date time (So in response to the comment yes it would be better to make use of the date/time in the Log Entries and to do away with the log table).
I have some kind of this table.
The question is what is the best way to create this kind of table?
Should I create for each item one table is it possible to create only one table??
Updated: See comments under #Emil.
You should have 1 tables as #Emil has suggested.
This should look like, soemthing like
_id, sort, grade, diameter, length, price1_dol, price1_euros, price2_dol, price2_euros, final,
Note: I have split up prices columns up - so you have price1_dol, price1_euros, price2_dol, price2_euros.
It is indeed possible to make this data into just one table. The columns sort and grade seem to uniquely identify one row so together they might make up a candidate key. If so you could use those as your primary key, or create a new integer column that you use as the primary key.
You should definitely not create one table per item. The database schema should never change with normal use. Only when you add, remove or change the type of data you have in your database should you consider changing the schema. Otherwise you should design and normalize your database in such a way that it's possible to grow the data only by inserting new rows, not new tables.
I have in my db 2 table with a many to many relationship.
TAB_ARTICLES: {_ID, TITLE, BODY, DATE}
TAB_TAG: {_ID, NAME, COLOR, DATE}
TAB_ART_TAG: {_ID, ARTICLE_ID, TAG_ID}
I need to populate a ListView, one row for article and in every row I need to have a TextView for every label linked to that article. Like the following image
I think 2 solutions.
a. I use a CursorAdapter with a cursor made only on TAB_ARTICLE and than in every row I do a query to join the other 2 tables looking for all tags related at this article. This solution require a lot of db accesses.
b. I realize a temporary table
TABLE_TEMP: {ARTICLE_TITLE, ARTICLE_BODY, ARTICLE_DATE, TAG1_NAME, TAG1_COLOR, TAG2_NAME, TAG2_COLOR, ...}
and I use a query on this table as cursor for custom adapter. This solution use more space and have a limitation on possible displayed tags due to table columns.
Are there other ways?
Well, actually, it's a multicriterion thing: time, space, updates, search, etc. So there's no single recipe. It's very probable, however, that multiple queries will bog down scrolling. Worse, on some devices only. A temporary table may or may not be OK depending on the overall size of your data. And you may want to keep this redundant table in sync with the main one, making simultaneous updates to both.
One of the simplest trade-offs could be adding a redundant TEXT/CLOB column with the tag data (XML, JSON, other markup/separated format) to TAB_ARTICLES and keeping it in sync with your detail data. By the way, you will really need the M:M schema only if your queries substantiate that. Otherwise, the single table would suffice.
Again, I'd list and evaluate all the criteria first and decide what dimensions really need to be scalable and simplify the rest.
In my Android app, I need to temporarily store some data in a form of table such as follows:
id | column 1 | column 2 | ... | column n
The data are downloaded from a server whenever users press a button. However, the data table doesn't have a fix number of column (as well as row) every time user downloads it from the server. For example, the server may send data with 3 columns the first time. Then it might send data with 5 columns the second time, etc...
Given this scenario, I think the database is probably the right data structure to use. My plan is to create a database, then add and delete tables as necessary. So I have been reading various tutorials on Android database (one example is this one http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/119293/Using-SQLite-Database-with-Android#). It seems to me I cannot create new table with variable number of columns using the sqlite database. Is this correct? In the onCreate(SQLiteDatabase db) method, the "create table" command must be specified with known number of columns and their data types. I could provide several "create table" commands, each with different number of columns but that seems like very crude. Is there a way to create database tables with variable number of columns on the fly?
Another alternative probably using several hash tables, each storing one column of the data table. I'm seriously considering this approach if the database approach is not possible. Any better suggestion is welcomed.
There is no such thing as a variable number of columns in an SQLite data base. Also, adding and deleting tables dynamically seems like a horrible hack.
It sounds like you want to store an array of values associated with an id. I suggest you think in terms of rows, not columns. Use a table structure like (id, index, value); each array of values returned by the server results in as many rows as necessary to store the values.
this is more of a question of theory than anything else. I am writing an android app that uses a pre-packaged database. The purpose of the app is solely to search through this database and return values. Ill provide some abstract examples to illustrate my implementation and quandary. The user can search by: "Thing Name," and what I want returned to the user is values a, b, and c. I initially designed the database to have it all contained on a single sheet, and have column 1 be key_index, column 2 be name, column 3 be a, etc etc. When the user searches, the cursor will return the key_index, and then use that to pull values a b and c.
However, in my database "Thing alpha" can have a value a = 4 or a = 6. I do not want to repeat data in the database, i.e. have multiple rows with the same thing alpha, only separate "a" values. So what is the best way to organize the data given this situation? Do I keep all the "Thing Names" in a single sheet, and all the data separately. This is really a question of proper database design, which is definitely something foreign to me. Thanks for your help!
There's a thing called database normalization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization. You usually want to avoid redundancy and dependency in the DB entities using a corresponding design with surrogate keys and foreign keys and so on. Your "thing aplpha" looks like you want to have a many-to-many table like e.g. one or many songs belong/s to the same or different genres. You may want to create dictionary tables to hold your id,name pairs and have foreign keys referencing these tables. In your case it will be mostly a read-only DB so you might want to consider creating indexes with high FILLFACTOR percentage don't think sqlite allows it to do though. There're many ways to design the database. Everything depends on the purpose of DB. You can start with a design of your hardware like raids/file systems/db block sizes to match the F-System's block sizes in order to keep the I/O optimal and where to put your tablespaces/filegroups/indexes to balance the i/o load. The whole DB design theory/task is really a deep subject which is not to be underestimated nor is a matter of few sentences in the answer of stackoverflow. :)
without understanding your data better here is my guess at what you are looking for.
table: product
- _id
- name
table: attribute
- product_id
- a