MYSQL :: Site User To A Paid Member? Database Design HELP

Importing Member Database Via PHPMyAdmin
I have a member database which contains usernames, password, names, contact info, etc.

I have been able to successfully import it into MySQL via PHPMyAdmin, my question is how do I turn the passwords column into a MD5 value for each of the 5215 rows? The passwords in the spreadsheet are their raw values. I need them to be MD5 values.

Is there something that I can do in PHPMyAdmin to edit the passwords column to turn them into MD5 values or is there something that I should do with the spreadsheet before importing it?

Changing Member ID's In A Mysql Database
I've been dumped in charge of an intranet site that has various php pages. One of the pages is a member list.

Quite simply, this page lists members in the order that they were added to the mysql database that contains them.

At the moment, I have a list of members under a member table that are pulled from the db in ascending order according to their member ID (1-25).

I now just want to add a new row to the member table (via phpmyadmin) and add a member with the ID of 4, so that he appears under member #3. The php page will then put him in the right place in the list.

The trouble is that there is already a member #4, so I can't just change his member # to 4 (obvious primary key error occurs).

My question is, how can I simply slip in a new member where I want, so that the consequent members and there member ID's all shift one place down in the table?

I'm obviously no php pro and don't plan to be, it's just every so often I need to change a member ID in this way and I'm clueless as to how to do it.

Paid Access To MySQL Fields
The normal web surfer to my site gets access to data in part of my table. When the user logs in, I would like him to get access to the other fields. Pay membership programs, such as amember, dreamaccounts etc use HTACCESS securing files. I have not run accross one that can secure fields.

To my mind, there are two ways of doing it: First, you can make a table and a query and change out the connections via php on login (does anyone no of an existing pay membership appl that can do this; Second, and I don't know if this is possible, but possibly the use of MySQL privledges to do this. More specifically, column_priv. I believe there is a View function that one may be able to use.

One Database For Site And Forum?
I have a site and a forum and I want to use one database for them, so when somebody registers in the site - to be registered automatically in the forum.
Is this possible and if it is - how?

User Permissions: MySQL DB Design
There is a huge problem I have been breaking my head over in the field of setting user permissions for my CMS.

It is still in the development stage so I have all the freedom I need for any adjustments I need to make.

My main focus of worry is on how to set the permissions, not in a static, but in a dynamic way.

The end goal is to install the CMS for a variety of people. They will then have the control to make their own user groups and permission rules for each group and post.

What I am having problems with is the following:
Figuring out how to design the database to give me the options to:

-Set read, write, edit, move, delete, vote, comment, attach permissions for posts.

-Users can only do these things on posts of their user-level and lower or if they are the author. IF the post category allows this.

Update: Where I am at now:
I have decided to go with assigning 'levels' to each group and for each action.

Level 0 is the admin level, the admin can do whatever he wants. Level 255 is a ban.

I think I should set level-requirements on different types of posts. Let's say an admin announcement has edit-requirement level 0 where as an author article would have edit-requirement level 1 so only trusted mods can change it but reading-level 10 so all people can read it. (example level values).

I was thinking something like this:
posts[post_id....post_level_id=ì«']
post_permissions[permission_id=ì«', read_level=ཆ' edit_level=Ƈ' delete_level=Ɔ'....etc]

Do you guys think this would be a good way to go? And how would you integrate this into the database?

As stated before I edited the post a bit.

User Messaging System Design
I am designing a website in which users can send messages to one
another. Each user will have a mailbox where they can read their
incoming and outgoing messages and delete them if necessary. Anyone
have suggestions on the optimal way to design the database for such a
system?

Random Password Vs. User Created Password For Site Login
Are there any security issues or other concerns that make one preferable? The client is pushing for user created passwords.

I'm mapping out the basic functionality and front-end for a MySQL/PHP back-end that will be completed by a third party. I'm a novice to MySQL but familiar with PHP and their interaction. Mainly looking for anything to support one method over the other.

Building My First Database Driven Site.
Before I begin, can I just state I have never installed anything on Linux server, so I am very new to this...

Okay at the mo I have and using MYSQL version 3.23.58 on my Linux Sever, incase this is important, heres the details of my server: WEB SERVEUR
Platform : Small - Fedora Core 3
Control panel : Plesk 100
Config : AMEN 2400 - AMD Athlon XP 2400+ Disk: 80 Gb - Memory: 512 Mb

OK, I need to upgrade to the latest MYSQL version. So far, I have downloaded "mysql-standard-5.0.24a-linux-i686.tar" and unpacked the file uner /usr/local

This is where I am stuck, I have no idea what to do next.. I need help for someone never done this before, preferbally a guide like... STEP by STEP, type this,

Linking Site To MySql Database
I have bought the PHP and Database book and have created a database [windows](saved under the default directory under Program FilesMySql...) and I have created a server. How do I link the website (localhost - same PC as one with MySQL) with the database or is it done automatically?

Create Php Site From Existing Database
I have been contacted by one of my clients to construct a knowledge bank based on their ms access database. I have successfully converted the ms access database to MySQL using the GUI conversion tools supplied by MySQL.com . I am wondering, and I don't know whether this is the right site to do this, if I can easily create a php site based on the database tables that have been converted.

Best Design For Hierachical User Subscription To Manydifferent Things?
Currently:
Message system allows users to "subscribe" to messages that other users submit. So User1 can subscribe to User2's submitted messages. These messages will appear in User1's inbox.

Groups also exist. Each group has a memberbase of users, and each group has a related theme. For example, a group called "MUSIC LOVERS" can have members who are musicians. Users can also subscribe to "GROUPS" so any messages posted by these users in these groups, can also appear in the user's INBOX.

Currently i have 2 tables that link up:
A) USERID / USERID (facilitate user-user subscription)
B) USERID /GROUPID (facilitate user-group subscription)

However, i foresee in the near future, i will add many many more subscription options. THus i was thinking, rather than having to create many new tables for each  type (group/user/etc) of subscription, would it be feasible to create just ONE table that will universally cater to ANY type of subscription (now or in the future).

My idea was to create a linking table with fields
A)USERID / String Defining Subscription

So for example:
User A subscribes to:
Group: "Music"
Group: "Cars"
User: "UserB"
User: "UserC"

The link table would then have entries as follows (assuming USERA's USERID is 0001):

USERID / Subscription String
0001   /  #Music
0001   /  #Cars
0001   /  $UserB
0001   /  $UserC

To find the list of users that userA subscribed to, i would

1. filter for all "0001s" (thus having a list of all the Subscription strings belonging to 0001)

2. filter these strings for all "$" (this symbol denotes a subscription to another user) I would thus obtain "$UserB" and "$UserC"

3  Extract the "USERX" portion from "$USERX" and go to the user table and run a search for "UserX" in this case "UserB" and "UserC" grab their respective USERIDs.

Same would be for the groups as well.

In fact, I could even define the Subscription string like this: #Cars$UserB.

This would mean that a person can subscribe to messages from the "Cars" group that are ONLY sent by "UserB".

I feel this would make my script future proof for watever type of subscription (possibly even hierachical) options.

I was wondering if there were any other more efficient methods of accomplishing this, esp since this may require a lot of queries to just accomplish one function, possibly loading the server qutie a bit.

Pull Data From 2 Database Tables Into 1 Table On My Site.
I got 2 tables: a dev_tasks and a task_history table. The task table has to record information about the task I am working on AND the history table is for the task history logs. I am trying to display info from both tables into 1 table on my site.

Most of the info will come from the dev_tasks table BUT i want to dedicate on column of the displayed info for the latest log made to the task_history table.

The common column to both tables is the 'taskid' column.

What would the query look like to pull the info from both tables, knowing that the taskid is common to both and that I want to display the last log per tasks from the task_history table?

A Seprate Database For PHPBB Or Merge The Tables With The Site?
I have a databse for the main website that will contain ~15 tables. Are there advantages/disadvantages to merging the phpBB tables with the one from the site or seprating the tables sets in 2 different databases?

Making Site Login Add Users To Phpbb Database Table
I have a login script for my site that I got off the net and was planning to use, but, I also wanted to make it so that when a user signed up thru the registration form it would also add them to the phpbb database's table. It wasn't discussed heavily from where i got the script but from what was mentioned the encryptions differ which results in a rejected login. Code:

Deleted Root User From 'user' Database!
I so stupidly deleted the root user from my mysql > user database. Now I can't login to mysql. I uninstalled the rpm and reinstalled it but it still won't let me setup a new root user. How can I delete the mysql data files so that I start again, fresh? Where are these files located? I can't find them anywhere after removing the RPM but they are obviously there because upon reinstalling the RPM I'm still in the same position--I try to do

mysqladmin -u root password 'password'

but it says "Access denied for user root@localhost"

How To Design Database
I want to build a database for menu driven.
like
file
--new
--- html
--- php
--open
--- html
--- php
--save
edit
--cut
--copy
--paste
and like that.

So,please help me how to start with designing the database as it can have n no. of levels.

Database Design
I need the perfect mysql_fetch_assoc function for my db class file, i wan't to use it on the following situation:

I want to select and list some fields from a table in the mysql database.

I want to list them by fieldname and not by number result.

I mean not $result['number'] , i want $result['fieldname']

Here is a little example:
=================================================================
$result = $db->execute("select id,name,text from categories where catid=$catid;");
echo ($result[1]!="") ? "<tr><td> Name: </td><td>{$result[1]}</td></tr>" : "";
=================================================================
I want to list the result by fieldname. Maybe so:

echo ($result['name']!="") ? ............................

Database Design
I have database tables for folders and a database with documents in it.

The folders table is setup like this

folderid
foldername
folderdescription

The document table is setup like this

documentid
documentname
documentdescription
folderid

I have a user table and want to set it so I can say certain users have permission on certain folder but not others.

I was thinking about adding a group table and putting the users in groups, but then certain users may need access to more than one document folder. I am thinking I will need to add some sort of table that handles just the permissions, but I am not sure.

I am just trying to sort out how to make it so I can put groups in and assign access to folders based on the groups.

Database Design
I usage of mySQL will revolve around a common group + user system. There
can be multiple groups and each group will contain some subset of users.

Each group will have a custom set of data whose values vary per user.

So basically a sample structure might look like this:
(some details intentionally left out)

Database

Table_Group_A
# of user columns

Table_Group_A_UserX
Column 1 Data
Column 2 Data
...
Column N Data

One probably incorrect thought on my part is that it would not be
necessary to store the usernames in Table_Group_A of those users who
belong to that group. But, thinking about it more, it seems like a good
idea. My original intent was to simply look for tables named
Table_Group_A_* and extract the username from the table name...

Does anyone have any recommends concerning this kind of design? I would
like to be able to lay things out in mySQL as cleanly as possible.

Database Design
I've read Ben Fortas book MySQL Crash Course which is a usefull introduction. However, I need to create a database that includes product descriptions, shopping card, stock levels, customer details, order records etc. While the Crash Course book gives some very useful information, I didn't really feel it gave me sufficient information for designing a database. Can anyone recommend any books that cover this aspect in more detail.

I do have the MySQL manual download pdf which I haven't read, but I'm assuming that this wont provide the sort of guidance I need. Presumably a book that also covers topics such as database maintenance/backup etc will be very useful too.

Database Design
I currently have 2 databases. The first one is used to store each user's info. This database has 3 tables. One that stores the login and password, another that stores their preferences, and another that stores their information (email, phone number, name, ...). In each table I use the login (char(25)) as the primary key.

The other database is used to store the posts and replies. I use 2 tables. One stores all of the information for each post and the other stores all of the information for the replies. I currently do not have a primary key for these tables.

First of all, I have tried to break up the User's database into tables based on how much I will be searching for that info.(for example, I have placed only the login and password in a table). Is this a good way to speed up my queries? My database does seem to be normalized with or without splitting the database up into different tables.

Database Design
What I've got is a database with different
category's and products below them. The thing I'm having trouble with is
the products all have different sizes and colors, and each (different)
product has it's own id and quantity. My first idea was to create one
huge table and deal with it. Is there a better way to do this? Is there
some resources on database design which would point me in the right
direction?

Database Design
I want to design a database that will have 4 main elements:

1. A person database - of individuals and their qualifications

2. An airplane database - of individual airplanes and their attributes

3. A flight database - where 'a person above' flies 'an airplane' with details of the flight

4. A maintenance database - containing descriptions of maintenance items done by 'a person' to 'a plane'

The outputs from this database would be several different log book types, pilots log, engine log, airframe log, propeller log, etc.

I just need a little guidance. I can see where I could just have one single large maintenance table where entries are ID'd with a plane ID and a person ID. But is that the right approach? Should the maintenance log be specific to a certain plane?

The same holds true for the flights. Just one big flights log with entries ID'd bt pilot & plane or each pilot have his own separate flight log???

Database Design
I have make an lyric databse, the structure is like that

table: artist
artist_id (int)
name (varchar)
gender (varchar)
region (varchar)

table: lyric
lyric_id (int)
artist_id (index)
song_title (varchar)
lyric (text)

these 2 tables only for lyric for single artist. As you music lovers know, sometime artists sing some songs with other artists. Do you know how should I design another table to store those lyrics?

Database Design Tip?
Im designing a database and find that I seem to have a few small tables with say, 3 or 4 fields, where all of those fields are required to identify a record. Is it better to make a composite primary key consisting of all the fields, or introduce a non-composite primary key, like an auto_increment integer?

Database Design
I have my design like this. I have one table for the protuct that has a
collum for product type. Product type is another table that has links to
other tables like motherboards, hard drives etc. I hope you understand this.
Is that the easyest, most efficent way to do it?

Database Design Qn
I have a user_account table consisting of an auto id, email address and
password fields.

The id is made the primary key. Is that a good idea or should i just
discard the id and use email address instead?

If I were to have the email address as a foreign key in another table,
will the space consumed bigger that if i were to just use the id?

Which criteria should I give more priority to in deciding which way to go?

New Database Design
I am creating a database of used books for my website and am new to Mysql. My question is this:

should I use the normal form design, or use one table?

I will probably not exceed more than 5,000 books (not in the near future at least. By the time I exceeded 5,000, I would probably have a new site).
I will be updating it almost every day.
I want to query the database using php, with maybe 4 or 5 optional criteria (i.e. author, title, edition, publisher, etc..). With the option of having all those criteria being used in one query.
I would like to also store images for maybe 500-1000 books.

Knowing these things, and the fact that I am a beginner (and normal form querying and altering does seem quite difficult!) can someone advise me as to how I should design my database?

Database Design
I am implementing a web site which will have to support multiple pages of articles (you've all seen "page 1 of 10" on many sites). Since each page can be fairly large and if someone requests page 5, for example, I don't want to load the whole article. I'm visualizing article as a linked list where each page is a node and 'next' pointer tells me which row in 'pages' table to select when a user clicks on "next" page.

Database Design
I need a database which tracks individual users progress in accomplishing 9,100 identical tasks. How can I structure table(s) to accomodate thousands or millions of users. One table with a record for each user would have 9,100 fields which I believe is beyond the limit of some if not all MySql table types. Not to mention it would make one extremely large table. On the other hand, if I go with individual tables for each user that would mean perhaps a million tables. It seems that having thousands of tables open at one time would adversely effect performance.

Database Design
I am designing a database for a dating website that needs to be able to hold hundreds of thousands of records and still be searchable.

What is the best way to go about this.

Should i just define indexes for all of the fields i need to search by or are seperate databases the way to go?

Database Design
is there any database design tool for mysql in which we just design database and it generates database scripts.

Database Design
A complex network configuration will be modeled into a database: nodes, ports, paths, links,We suppose that the model exists and the database is created
Now the issue is: each user should be possible to create it's own network configuration, store it into database, and work with it.
So a user can have 10 networks configured. The same for each user.
Usually a user works with his own configurations. He doesn't need the configurations of other users.However it should be a restriction that a user can not see other user configurations.
The question is: which is the best way to implement this ?
Ex:
1. each time a user is added, duplicate the database for that user.
2. keep everything in a database but add a column user in most of the tables.

Database Design
I'm try to design a database where students can take class, and teachers teach classes. The tables are: users, enroll ( to connect users table and class table), class, course, and roles (to determine the privilege of the user whether is a student or teacher).

Because of the security reason, I would like to seperate the Roles from within the Users table, but then I run into trouble when designing the "roles" table.

Users table: User_ID (PK), User_Name, etc...
Roles table: User_ID (PK), Roles_Teacher, Role_Student

1st question: How can I link these two tables together?
2nd question: Is it better to seperate students into Students table and teachers into Teachers table, or just put all of them into Users table to simplify the design?

Database Design
I would like to create a ticketing system using MySQL. Since I have never done any database design/data modeling I am looking for someone to point me in the right direction in terms of reference materials, examples or anything else you feel will help me. I will attempt to outline what I am trying to accomplish below.

data to be stored:
1. customer data
2. employee data
3. vendor data
4. contact data
5. parts data
6. scheduling data
7. work order data
8. parts order data

The thing I can't seem to get my head around is how to create and store lists (e.g.. customer contacts, vendor contacts, employee contacts, work order contacts, etc... Also how to create and store a list of parts for a parts order.) while maintaining database normalization.

Database Design
I've been looking over all the database design threads and they all seem to say 1 database one table for everything. It seems like that would decrease the search time for my program if it has to look through everything.
What I was thinking was 1 db and 2 tables. One for products the other for reviews. I'm anticipating about 10,000 products and any number of reviews. Combining these two would over bloat my products table - I don't see anything wrong with seperating the tables. Perhaps I'm wrong. I'm a total SQL newb but I'm trying to get everything right as possible.

Database Design
working on building a database to hold all the information for "new world of darkness" characters.I'm building it with mysql, FYI.I'm not sure on some things.
one is how to handle merits each character can have an unlimited number of merits, each merit is ranked 1 to 5 dots. and some merits can have additional... 'strings'.
the main table will probably be just the character table including names, supernatural 'race', faction, etc.I'm going to give a table for merits including merit name, merit_id , book it came from, page number in book.
should I have a table like this?

character_merits
char_id
merit_id
dots
extra_info

or is there a better way to do this?
also if I separate merits from the main table, should I include attributes? or should I put attributes in there own table? each attribute can only have dot's.

Database Design
I am trying to create a MySQL database. I have my info in Paradox databases. The databases are builders production records. Some are separate databases per year (neoplan1981, neoplan1982, etc). Which would be the best way to do this in MySQL? One database for all of the builders (neoplan, mci, etc), with each in a separate table, then the years in a separate table, or create the tables as I already have them in Paradox?
My goal is to have an input field on the web page. Then having the returned data be a combination of the buildres databases. For example, I would like to see all records for octa (octa having 1 record in neoplan1981 and 2 records in mci1984), so the resuls would show all 3.

Database Design
Hope you can help a little I am hoping to develop a website which will be for a charity looking at bringing carers and people who need help together. I have developed the site and I am now looking at developing the MySql database.I am slightly unsure how to design it.On the one side there will be people who need help, this table will contain there id, first name, last name, address, email, disabilities. And on the other side will be people or organisations that can help this table will contain there id, name, address, email, disabilities that they have experience in.I can establish that the disability is common between them, but I am unsure of the whole Normalization process i.e First Normal Form, Second Normal Form and Third Normal Form.

Database Design
I have a simple site where many items are listed and each item can be rated 1 through 10. The obvious database design would be to have one table with items (ItemID, Name, ...) and another for ratings (ItemID, UserID, Rating), but will I run into problems later down the road with this design?
Also, since I want to easily be able to retrieve the overall rating of any item, should I store that information separately in the items table? Or is it not computational expensive to calculate the average over a table whenever I need?

Database Design Questions
I have 2 questions:
1st How many records can you store in the mysql table and database before you slow it down?(Im not referring about the web server storage)

2nd Having a table of people(contact info) data, is it bad database design to create 50 tables(one for each state) in one database to hold the data. If I can I think it would be fast for the searching of peopleâ€™s info. You can search one state instead of all 50(if you known what state you want).

Database Design Question
I am creating a script that will display a table that has the days of the week in the top header and the restaurant name in the first column for every row. Each restaurant will have an entry in the backend for the day of the week and it's hours.

What would be the best way to go about designing the database. How is this?

restaurants
-->id
-->name
-->phone
-->url
-->hours_sun
-->hours_mon
-->hours_tue
-->hours_wed
-->hours_thu
-->hours_fri
-->hours_sat

Database Design Tool
is there any software to draw a database design with his relationship for mysql?

Database Design Issue
i am working on a site redesign that include 25 articles in distinct html files. The plan is to incorporate into the new design an "article of the month" feature where the monthly showcased article is taken from the existing articles. Is it possible to create a database that points to the html files instead of entering the content of each article into the database? Or is there a better way of achieving my goal? Your help is appreciated!

Database Design: Keep One Table Or Add More?
This is perhaps due to bad planning but regardless its now an issue.

I plan to have different sections on my site, each with a general article feel but displayed differently and whatnot.

I decided using a simple `article` table with things such as title, short description, body, author, and so on.

The problem is now I realize each section might need a bit more data than other sections.

The question is: Do I make these seperate tables or just add fields onto my existing article table to handle these edge cases.

There are a few issues with seperate tables. One being my comment system will no longer work since it assumes everything is an article.

Using one table with extra fields would solve this problem but then some of the columns will be null for each row.

I don't think that is such a bad thing, especially since I'm not going to have too many rows in the first place.

What do you guys suggest? I'm leaning towards adding more columsn to my existing database.

Database Design Question
I need to set up a database and am a bit confused as to how to set up the tables, columns etc. Can someone tell me what would be the best way to go about setting this up? (two tables?) There will be multiple groups and each will contain the following:

Group A
Location: Somewhere
Leaders: John, Sally, Jack
Members: Joe, Bob, Bill, Frank, Don, Jim, Sandy, etc.

How's this:

groups (table)
id, name, location, leaders, members

people (table)
id, name, email