I've moved on to actually creating the MySQL database now. I've read a lot of theory on database design and such but at university I have not come across INNO DB tables and I believe these need to be used in order to maintain Referential Integrity and aid in the creation of foreign keys. Does the use of this table type as apposed to ISAM have any effect on the way I should implement my web-based project??

no, it shouldn't, it merely allows you to utilize relational integrity in the database rather than writing logic into your app to handle it

Thanks, just needed to make sure before hand.

I'm currently using phpMyAdmin to test my database by running queries but upon creating this table I get an error.

SQL-query:

CREATE TABLE Notification (
Notification_ID INT(4) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
Person_ID INT(4) NOT NULL ,
NotificationType_ID INT(4) NOT NULL ,
NotificationSubType_ID INT(4) NOT NULL ,
Notification_Details TEXT(250) NOT NULL ,
Notification_Date DATE(12) NOT NULL ,
Target_Date DATE(12) NOT NULL ,
Status_Type VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL ,
PRIMARY KEY (Notification_ID)
) TYPE = InnoDB

MySQL said:

#1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '(12) NOT NULL, `Target_Date` DATE(12) NOT NULL, `Status_Type` V


Any ideas why??

DATE datatype doesn't take a length

it's a special datatype with an internal format that you need not know anything about

D'oh, silly me, thanks r937.