Hello there. I design/develop the occasional web application, and I frequently find myself needing to store data that connects two things together. At the moment, I just store one piece of data from each in it's own table, and use that. For example, a "friend" system where users select their friends (where they could have any number of friends). The system I currently use would simply store the ID of the user, and the ID of one friend, but this seems hardly optimal to me, especially since in a real life situation with more than 100 users, something like this would expand extremely quickly. Is this really the best way, or can anyone suggest an alternate method of setting things up?

i dunno if it's really the best way, but i've seen a couple of dozen people ask questions about "friend" networks, and that's the way they're all doing it

Yes. That is the optimal method.

Really? Alright, thanks.

Hi,

There is an example on the Database Answers Web Site that might be helpful :-
http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_...gees/index.htm

It shows a general approach to modelling Relationships between any one person and an unlimited number of other people, with the types of the Relationships and their duration.

HTH

B.Dimple
Senior DBA