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Multiple entity table design help

  • March 17, 2017 at 6:34 am

    #341777

    I'm facing some issue to work out a database design, its a very small database that stores data of Companies, their board members and shareholders. 
    Initially I thought "ok, let us have an Individuals table, a Companies table and a Shareholders table"... then I looked at the data and realize Companies can also be shareholders...

    So... My original implementation is lacking some help... Here's what's on my notepad atm.

    Other ideas: Metadata table? Overkill IMO. Single entity table for Individuals and Companies? Maybe...

    Any help is appretiated.

    My stack: VS2015 ~ C# ~ MSSQL 2014[/url] ~ DevCraft ~ ReSharper ~ DataGrip ~ Linqer[/url]

  • March 17, 2017 at 9:54 am

    #1933781

    If I was implementing it, I'd do a 3 table system:
    Company - which would hold the company name, the board member and the shareholder with FK's on board member and share holder to the other 2 tables
    BoardMember - which would hold a list of board members
    ShareHolder - which would hold a list of share holders and a boolean column to indicate if it is a company or an individual

    I'd also have some identity value that is also a PK on the tables so you have somethign nice to build your FK on.  But it does depend on how you will be accessing this data too and how big you expect the tables to get.

    The above is all just my opinion on what you should do. 
    As with all advice you find on a random internet forum - you shouldn't blindly follow it.  Always test on a test server to see if there is negative side effects before making changes to live!
    I recommend you NEVER run "random code" you found online on any system you care about UNLESS you understand and can verify the code OR you don't care if the code trashes your system.

  • March 17, 2017 at 10:07 am

    #1933786

    You'll need an abstract that represents any legal entity about which you need to store information.  In this case, so far that's company or shareholder.

    Legal_Entities ( Legal_Entity_Id, Name, ... )

    Companies ( Company_id [FK-->Legal_Entities], <other_data_specific_to_just_this_company> )

    Board_Members ( Company_Id, Legal_Entity_Id, ... )

    Shareholders ( Company_Id, Legal_Entity_Id, ... )

    SQL DBA,SQL Server MVP(07, 08, 09) "Money can't buy you happiness." Maybe so, but it can make your unhappiness a LOT more comfortable!

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