Best Practices for Database Design in PHP Web Development

A database is the core of the ecosystem of the World Wide Web. From the simplest websites to the huge directories, each one is driven by its database. Any category nature of a front-end website is the result of appropriate designing of the database to make it secure and efficient in its performance.

Let’s understand the good database design principles, irrespective of its ultimate intended use. For every type of database design, there are a set of standard rules and best practices that many experienced and well established PHP Web Development Company in India follow, all of which can help a database stay organized and help to team up with the respective site in a smart and efficient way.

Start with the Functionality Required?

The very first stage of planning for a database is to brainstorm on the papers or otherwise about the database that is required to be stored given the specific business needs. Do not spend time thinking about specific fields or tables as that isn’t required at the moment it can be taken care of at a later phase. In this stage, you can brainstorm to create a general roadmap and a detailed overview of the functionalities of the website and narrow it down further. Try to cover each and every step initially or else it would be tough to add to it later on.

Try to think slipping into the users’ shoes. What they will require for each stage. If it is a food site, for instance, try to analyze what each user will want to get from the site? Would they like to search for their favorite recipe, would they access the membership content or any sponsored page, or would they be looking for their past history of membership or purchases? Considering the nature, need and target market of the business you can define the specific categories of the website to make it a perfect database.

Curate and Determine Tables and Fields

Now, it’s time to move to the next stage of starting to ascertain and create the tables and the fields that anyone would require in the database to run this business properly. This is the crux of the database design, and also the most crucial part. This is the phase where you need to properly link tables together, sort the data within every table and group the tables correctly using right methods or segregate it. Define a very clear and neat tables and fields making it more specific. You may also rearrange and redefine the tables and fields to improve the security and the efficiency of the database. These are the tips for designing tables that you may seek when you hire dedicated PHP developers.

Deploy a Database Modeling Tool

Once you know what the exact need for your site, it’s time to organize your database. You should now deploy a good database design system, especially one that can help organize visual database models, like DBDesigner4 or MySQL Workbench (MySQL databases only). You may also try Gliffy, a free online app for developing database models or flowcharts.

There are many premium tools also available like Microsoft Vision, etc. In addition, you may also get many cheaper substitutes - many would be open-source, including the above mentioned two.

You need to get accustomed to the icons and standard visual components to create database models and start defining it through diagrams and flowcharts before time. It will help you correct some logical errors when you create the final and accurate databases. 

Interlinked Databases

In the database, all data are interlinked and are often called relational databases. It manifests that databases are interlinked in some way or the other. Let’s take an example if you run a blog your database would be somehow related to the posts you have written, and logged in users could be connected with their comments they’ve posted.

So using relational databases technique, we can save plenty of data by storing the data in an organized manner within your different tables which you can categorize for the post, for members, comments, and yet another for products. Now you can integrate the data between different tables together using unique keys.

Just remember never forget to assign a unique primary key to every entry. It acts as a “social security number” for each entry. It will ensure that no two entries will have a similar ID in the same table.

But having a unique ID or product name is not sufficient. It is always wise to use unique primary keys. Still, a database is at risk for duplicate records which may break the code within the website. Moreover, it is always advisable to use a foreign key, which is just a numeric ID that refers to a unique key in another table, which would be your primary key. This is how every database is related to one another.

Integrating or Separating Data info Fields

You should also know within fields, where and when to integrate certain pieces of data and where to and when to keep them separate. When you hire custom PHP web development services providing company they will first understand and ascertain which information should in the same group and which should be the-odd-man out.

It is necessary for the seamless functioning of the website that the database space should not be wasted. If you could religiously do it, you will not have to separately update five different fields, when you could just update one field in threaded form. For this type of technique and to keep the field organized, you can take the data through an HTML form with these fields separated, but again, you can club them into a single thread before placing the information into the database.

Database Normalization

It is a guideline developed by the community for managing data in a database properly. There are five common forms to consider, and it is necessary to learn these five forms to create a well defined and robust design database.

Synopsis

Database design is actually a huge and complex subject with a lot to cover, but it isn’t that much tough to learn the basics and create a good design for the most basic of database structures. The most prominent part is brainstorming sessions and initial design. The primary objective of any database is to run the website easily and it should be scalable. Just ensure that you design a database that terminates only the required data when needed, avoid adding any duplicate records and can pick data throughout the database without fuss.

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