I have a form with basic info. such as name/date/printer and then about 8 different options each involving about 3 options for that section. The user can only select one of the 8 sections and then ofcourse the std. questions on the form. The table to store all this info. would be large to cater for all 8 options ... so I created 8 separate tables to store each option (this also alows to expand the details in each option if needed). Then I store a foriegn key in each table to match to the std (basic info.) table. Is this the best way to implement such a form. Should I store all info. in one table rather, or is spliting the info. over several tables better. Please let me know your thoughs. I will be using sql server + asp to store and retrive info. form the table/s.
Thanks you

separate tables for each option? hard to say without seeing the actual tables, but ordinarily that's a danger signal

p.s. please do not cross-post, your other post has been removed

Sorry but I posted group the wrong section initially. The tables look something like this

ts_design
Order_Id
Title
date required
date received
color to print
printername
Destination
instructions

then one can choose either a poster/flyer/business card/cover/advert ... each of these has its own options say ts_poster will be:

poster_id
type
customwidth
customhiegt
order_id (foreigh key to original order)

ts_flyer would be :
flyer_id
type
customwidth
customehight
size
order_id (foreigh key)

ts_advert would be:
advert_id
adwidth
adhight
order_id(may be more than one ad for an order_id)

I would really appreciate some help here as I sense this might not be the right way to go ... should it all just be in one table ... would make programming easier !!
thanks again
Shimon

Just to mention again that all these options are on one form all the options in ts_design need to be entered however the user chooses either a poster or a flyer or a advert etc... and this info is associated with the order table. I hope this is clear .. thanks again

looks like they all have approximately the same columns -- type, width, height

in this case, yeah, i'd probably go with one table

with an extra column to indicate whether the design was poster or flyer or whatever

Thanks for the advice ... will probably go that route