Database Design

[BigDukeyDog]

Hi there I have designed a 3 page form with a total of between 40-50 fields. The information will then go to a MySQL database. I think that the best way to organize this is by using several tables and connecting them through primary and foreign keys. They'd ultimately like to export the information in an Excel file. I'm more of a graphics/Flash person and don't know much about this. I know how to insert data into a table but never designed a large database and was wondering if anybody had any suggestions or could point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!

Duke

[borrob]

Hi Duke,

It all depends on how the information is connected.
let say you have a person and you have cars.
a person can have several cars
so you would have
table person fields id, name
table cars fields id, type
table persons_cars personid, carid.

but when a person CAN only have one car
you get:

table person fields id, name, carid
table cars fields id, type

There are no other reasons to distribute your data over several tables so
if all information belongs to one row use one table.

[BigDukeyDog]

Hi borrob thanks for replying. The form is located here:

http://meateor.com/kbc/

It is broken up by Student Information, Parent/Guardian Information and Additional Information. For most everything I guess it would be a one to one but for the parents it would be one to many since you can have a good amount of people living with you. I'll give it a shot I suppose and see how it works.