is this design valid for a database?

Question

I'm developing an online shop web application with ASP.NET MVC and EF. One of the requirements is that each product should be categorized, each category can have subcategories. But the problem is that each category can have multiple properties that are unknown. All these properties are of the string type.

This is how i designed the DB:

• Each product can have multiple attributes (1 to many)
• Each attribute has Name, Value, Product(FK), Category(FK)
• Each category, has a list of atteibutes. This is a list of strings (names of the atributes)
• I use the list of each category, from children to the highest parent, and add the names and value pairs to the atributes table, for each product.

My concern is that the attributes table will grow very fast. And i'm thinking i might run out of space for the attributes. Is that possible? Is this a feasable design for this environment?

Answer 1

Yes; it's valid design. Whether your design scales to your needs is another question. Ask yourself:

• how many rows will my products table have in 1, 2, and 4 years?
• how many rows will my category table have in 1, 2, and 4 years?
• how many rows will my attributes table have in 1, 2, and 4 years?

If you see your attributes table growing uncontrollably over time with respect to your products and categories then you likely have a scaling problem. On the other hand, if after a short while your products table stabilizes then you likely don't have a problem.

Pro tip: solve the problem when it becomes a problem (i.e., listen to the product manager and then add realism... ;-).