I am making a database schema for my project, but I am still learning, so I'd like to know what the best and most efficient way to go around creating the tables is. Thus:

Should this table be made into two instead of one as shown below? What is the recommended practice?

| movie_id | actor |

to

| movie_id | actor_id | and | actor_id | actor_name |

CodePudding user response：

Depends on how much data Actor is going to encompass, not just now but in the likely future.

Consider:

• Are you likely to add more than just a name?
• Are you querying based on the name?
• Do you need more than one actor per movie?

Since one of those is likely to be true, I'd suggest "yes, split it", but it's a subjective call at this point. It's worth studying normal forms as the relational databases out there tend to lend themselves to those more naturally.

CodePudding user response：

Yes, it's called normalization. Check out this link from Microsoft https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/access/database-normalization-description

For real-world db applications 3rd normal form is enough.