用于存储社交媒体帖子的数据库模式示例

Question

I am building a small social networking website, I have a doubt regarding database schema:

How should I store the posts(text) by a user?

I'll have a separate POST table and will link USERS table with it, through USERS_POST table.

But every time to display all the posts on user's profile, system will have to search the entire USERS_POST table for USER id and then display?

What else should I do?

Similarly how should I store the multiple places the user has worked or studied?

I understand it's broad but I am new to Database. :)

Answer 1

First don't worry too much, start by making it work and see where you get performance problems. The database might be a lot quicker then you expect. Also it is often much easier to see what the best solution is when you have an actual query that is too slow.

Regarding your design, if a post is never linked to more then one user then forget the USERS_POST table and put the user id in the POST table. In either case an index on the user id would help (as in not having to read the whole table) when the database grows large.

Multiple places for a single user you would store in an additional table. For instance called USERS_PLACES, give it a column user_id to link it to USERS plus other columns for the data you wish to store per place.

BTW In postgresql you might want to keep all object (tables, columns, ...) names lowercase because unless you take care to always quote them like "USERS" postgresql will make them lowercase which can be confusing.