I have a situation that I really don't know how to implement in a database. Please forgive me if I don't use quite the right terminology, I'm a coder but new at DBs.

I have a table of events. In the table there are the columns you might expect: date, creator, event type, brief description.

So far quite trivial. However, now I want to link up each event to a record in a different table that contains more information specific to the event. The problem is that the table to link to is different depending on the event type.

For instance, a hardware malfunction event might link to a table containing information about the hardware, serial number, model, etc; whereas a human error event might link to a table containing procedure number, step number, and so forth.

In C++ I would implement something like this by a pointer to a base class from which the specific event description table classes are derived.

Is there a recommended/proper way of doing this in an RDBMS?

Thanks!
Carlos

in a relational database, you would have a base supertype entity table which has the specific resources -- hardware, procedure, etc. -- as subtype entity tables

R937 - Thanks for your reply(s). I'm afraid you have lost me... Can you point me to a location/resources where supertypes are explained?

Carlos

first half dozen or so sites here --> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=supertypes+and+subtypes

I'll ignore the sarcasm and thank you for the pointer.... I'll be doing some reading today .

any sarcasm was inferred, not implied

it was simply the easiest way to give you a lot of quality links

Thank you for the information. I've started the design, and have some implementation specific questions that I've posted in a new thread.