Is this database design ok?

Question

I am developing a mvc app for a carpet company. A carpet's price will depend upon color combinations and size. So to model this scenario i am using 2 tables. 1.Carpets. 2.CarpetVarients.(For various color and size combinations).

In CarpetVarients table i am thinking about creating columns "Colors", "Size" and "Price" (along other columns). Colors column will store comma delimited colors(like Cream,Red,).

Will this design work? or should i make every combination a different carpet.

Answer 1

Generally, storing things as delimited strings is not a good idea (unless you are talking about a carpet that has multiple colours in which case things might be different). Better to have a row for each colour/size combination.

Maybe it would be better to think of what you call Carpet as a Style and then the Carpet table can have Style , Colour and Size .

eg

Style
StyleID     StyleName   Description
1           'Modern'    'Striped'
2           'Rustic'    'Checks'

Carpet
CarpetID  StyleID  Colour           Size    Price
1         1        'Red-Green'      'Small' '£'
2         1        'Orange-Teal'    'Large' '£££'
3         2        'Violet-Magenta' 'Large' '£££££'

eg Design to answer "Tell me all the carpets that have xxx as a colour."

…
Carpet
CarpetID  StyleID  Size    Price
1         1        'Small' '$'
2         1        'Large' '$$$'
3         2        'Large' '$$$$$'

Colour
ColourID ColourName RGB
1        Red        255, 0, 0
2        Green      0, 255, 0

CarpetColour
CarpetID ColourID
1        1
1        2
2        3
2        4
...              

Answer 2

You should create tables as follows:

Carpet
CarpetID (PK), CarpetName, Description
   1               abc      green-yellow 2*3

CarpetVarient
StyleID (FK), Color, Size, Price
   1           green  2     100
   1           yellow 3     100

So a carpet can be of multiple styles and total price of a carpet would be sum of Price based upon StyleId . Ex.The carpet named abc would be of total 200

Answer 3

You can also do something like

Carpet:
CarpetId   Carpet_PartNumber  Color   Size   parentID  Price
1                AB12          NULL    NULL    NULL    NULL
2                AB23          Green   12inch   1      100

This way you can have every carpet as a Individual product. Note(for color and size you can use a LOOKUP Table)