CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mysqldatabasedatabase-designandroid-activity
Stefan P
Stefan P

Reputation: 1043

Table structure for user activity feed - relational or not?

So I am stuck on a decision:

I am deciding wether to do something like this for a user activity feed:

id | userID | typeID | contentID | time

OR something more relational with foreign keys and proper indexing like this:

id | userID | postID | postCommentID | photoID | photoCommentID | time

Or along those lines.

I am looking for an answer which doesn't just say which one but also why and the advantages/disadvantages.

EDIT:

Another thing this applies to is wether using 1 comment table with type | contentID or postID | photoID is better OR 2 separate tables; one for photo comments and one for post comments??

EDIT 2:

How the data would be used:

It could be used in 2 scenarios - For displaying in a time line feed for the user themselves or other users around them.

EDIT 3:

The reason for choosing this method to create activity feeds even though all the detailed info is stored in other tables is for speed when loading feeds, although I understand I am sacrificing write performance. It also allows for me to add new data/post types later and reduces the number joins in my query to 0.

Thanks for your time!

-Stefan

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1505

Answers (1)

Cade Roux
Cade Roux

Reputation: 89661

When you say feed - you mean for someone else's consumption? Or for storing someone else's feed? Or just a person's activity in your system?

I would normalize first, denormalize as you need to later, but neither of your options show the full story of the scope of what you are modeling.

Upvotes: 1

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