Make own like system for various content - asp.net

There are three types of content in my database. They are Songs, Albums and Playlists. Albums and Playlists are just collections of songs. And I want to let the user put like for each of them. I made table with columns
LikeId UserId SongId PlaylistId AlbumId
for storing likes. For example if user puts like to song, I put song's id into SongId column and user's id into UserId column. Other columns will be null. It's working good,but I don't like this solution because it's not normalized.
So I want to ask if there are better solutions for this.

You should just create 3 tables - one for User paired with each of Playlist, Song, and Album. They'd look something like:
CREATE TABLE PlaylistLikes
(
UserID INT NOT NULL,
PlaylistID INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (UserID, PlaylistID),
FOREIGN KEY (UserID) REFERENCES Users (UserID),
FOREIGN KEY (PlaylistID) REFERENCES Playlists (PlaylistID)
);
CREATE TABLE SongLikes
(
UserID INT NOT NULL,
SongID INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (UserID, SongID),
FOREIGN KEY (UserID) REFERENCES Users (UserID),
FOREIGN KEY (SongID) REFERENCES Songs (SongID)
);
CREATE TABLE AlbumLikes
(
UserID INT NOT NULL,
AlbumID INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (UserID, AlbumID),
FOREIGN KEY (UserID) REFERENCES Users (UserID),
FOREIGN KEY (AlbumID) REFERENCES Albums (AlbumID)
);
Here, having both columns in the primary key prevents the user from liking the song/playlist/album more than once (unless you want that to be available - then remove it or maybe keep track of that in a 'number of likes' column).
You should avoid putting all 3 different types of likes in the same table - different tables should be used to represent different things. You want to avoid "One True Lookup Table" - here's one answer detailing why: OTLT
If you want to query against all 3 tables, you can create a view which is the result of a UNION between the 3 tables.

How about
LikeId UserId LikeType TargetId
Where LikeType can be "Song", "Playlist" or "Album" ?

Your solution is fine. It has the nice feature that you can set up explicit foreign key relationships to the other tables. In addition, you can verify that exactly one of the values is set by adding a check constraint:
check ((case when SongId is null then 0 else 1 end) +
(case when AlbumId is null then 0 else 1 end) +
(case when PlayListId is null then 0 else 1 end)
) = 1
There is an overhead incurred, of storing NULL values for all three. This is fairly minimal for three values.
You can even add a computed column to get which value is stored:
WhichId = (case when SongId is not null then 'Song'
when AlbumId is not null then 'Album'
when PlayListId is not null then 'PlayList
end);

As a glutton for punishment, I would use three tables: UserLikesSongs, UserLikesPlaylists and UserLikesAlbums. Each contains a UserId and an appropriate reference to one of the other tables: Songs, Albums or Playlists.
This also allows adding additional type-specific information. Perhaps Albums will support a favorite track in the future.
You can always use UNION to combine data from the various entity types.

Related

How to create a required many-to-many relationship in SQLite?

Suppose I have a schema like this:
CREATE TABLE Artist (
ArtistID INTEGER NOT NULL,
ArtistName TEXT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (ArtistID)
);
CREATE TABLE Song (
SongID INTEGER NOT NULL,
SongTitle TEXT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (SongID)
);
CREATE TABLE SongArtist (
SongID INTEGER NOT NULL,
ArtistID INTEGER NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (SongID, ArtistID),
FOREIGN KEY (SongID) REFERENCES Song(SongID),
FOREIGN KEY (ArtistID) REFERENCES Artist(ArtistID)
);
By defining a column as NOT NULL I can semantically say that having a value in it is required. How would I make a many-to-many relationship required, but only in one direction?
In this situation, what I mean is this: How can I say that a Song row must have at least one Artist row associated with it through the SongArtist join table? If I were to represent a song as the JSON object below, this would be equivalent to saying that the songArtistIds array must have a length of 1 or higher.
{
songId: 745194,
songTitle: "Title",
songArtistIds: [523214]
}
However, an Artist row need not be associated with any Song row necessarily. An artist can have 0 or more songs, but a song must have 1 or more artists. How can I enforce this in SQLite? Also, if the answer is that I cannot do this in SQLite, then what alternative do I have for an embedded application?

Insert primary key of unique value into foreign key

If I have a two tables like this:
CREATE TABLE users
(
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
username TEXT UNIQUE NOT NULL
);
CREATE TABLE games
(
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
player1 INTEGER REFERENCES users,
player2 INTEGER REFERENCES users,
comment TEXT
);
How can I insert a new row into the games table given two usernames?
The primary keys of the users would need to be looked up by their names in the users table first and then inserted into the games table. What's the best way to do this?
So, instead of
INSERT INTO games (player1, player2)
VALUES (1, 2);
how can I combine this with looking up the id values from usernames?
You could use subqueries to lookup the two usernames based on their ids:
INSERT INTO games (player1, player2, comment)
SELECT
(SELECT username FROM users WHERE id = 1),
(SELECT username FROM users WHERE id = 2),
'good luck';

SQLite Query plan

Is there a way to manipulate the query plan generated in SQLite?
I 'l try to explain my problem:
I have 3 tables:
CREATE TABLE "index_term" (
"id" INT,
"term" VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY("id"),
UNIQUE("term"));
CREATE TABLE "index_posting" (
"doc_id" INT NOT NULL,
"term_id" INT NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY("doc_id", "field_id", "term_id"),,
CONSTRAINT "index_posting_doc_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY ("doc_id")
REFERENCES "document"("doc_id") ON DELETE CASCADE,
CONSTRAINT "index_posting_term_id_fkey" FOREIGN KEY ("term_id")
REFERENCES "index_term"("id") ON DELETE CASCADE);;
CREATE INDEX "index_posting_term_id_idx" ON "index_posting"("term_id");
CREATE TABLE "published_files" (
"doc_id" INTEGER NOT NULL,,
"uri_id" INTEGER,
"user_id" INTEGER NOT NULL,
"status" INTEGER NOT NULL,
"title" VARCHAR(1024),
PRIMARY KEY("uri_id"));
CREATE INDEX "published_files_doc_id_idx" ON "published_files"("doc_id");
about 600.000 entries in the index_term, about 4 Millions in the index_posting and 300.000 in the published_files table.
Now when i want to find the number of unique doc_ids in index_posting which reference some terms i use the following SQL.
select count(distinct index_posting.doc_id) from index_term, index_posting
where
index_posting.term_id = index_term.id and index_term.term like '%test%'
The result is displayed in reasonable time (0.3 secs). Asking Explain Query plan returns
0|0|0|SCAN TABLE index_term
0|1|1|SEARCH TABLE index_posting USING INDEX index_posting_term_id_idx (term_id=?)
When i want to filter the count in the way that it only includes doc_ids of index_posting if there exists a published_files entry:
select count(distinct index_posting.doc_id) from index_term, index_posting,
published_files where
index_posting.term_id = index_term.id and index_posting.doc_id = published_files.doc_id and index_term.term like '%test%'
The query takes almost 10 times as long. Asking Explain Query plan returns
0|0|1|SCAN TABLE index_posting
0|1|0|SEARCH TABLE index_term USING INDEX sqlite_autoindex_index_term_1 (id=?)
0|2|2|SEARCH TABLE published_files AS pf USING COVERING INDEX published_files_doc_id_idx (doc_id=?)
So as far as i understand SQLITE changed here its query plan doing a full table scan of index_posting and a lookup in index_term instead of the other way around.
As a workaround i did do a
analyze index_posting;
analyze index_term;
analyze published_files;
and now it seems correct,
0|0|0|SCAN TABLE index_term
0|1|1|SEARCH TABLE index_posting USING INDEX index_posting_term_id_idx (term_id=?)
0|2|2|SEARCH TABLE published_files USING COVERING INDEX published_files_doc_id_idx (doc_id=?)
but my question is - is there a way to force SQLITE to always use the correct query plan?
TIA
ANALYZE is not a workaround; it's supposed to be used.
You can use CROSS JOIN to enforce a certain order of the nested loops, or use INDEXED BY to force a certain index to be used.
However, you asked for "the correct query plan", which might not be same as the one enforced by these mechanisms.

How to store an element with a lot of fields

I want to design a database system (I use SQLite)and in a table where I keep the history, I store some values of an employee (name,surname, id, etc..) One of the fields are some working positions which currently are 3, but in the future may increased to 4 or 5... Which is is more clever to do?
1) Have a table with all the fields (among them: wp1, wp2, wp3) and later add a column for the wp3, or
2) Store all these working positions to a diferrent table where i will have 2 fields id and wp and store the diferrent wp to multiple records?
Is a 'working position' a job title? A record of employment at a previous company?
1 is a bad idea.
You probably want something like this:
create table employees (
id int primary key,
name text not null
);
create table working_positions (
id int primary key,
employee_id int not null references employees(id), /* foreign key to employees table */
...other attributes of a working position...
);

SQLite Multi-column Insert/Replace with Multiple Join

Sorry for the poor title. I have a query (below) that executes properly and creates an insertion just as I would desire. However, I want to make it smarter by only inserting when the exact combination of three columns. Essentially, the three column tuple is a primary key, but I'm working with the limitation of sqlite's single primary key.
Basic Context
I have 4 tables: Permissions, Roles, Users, Actions
Permissions connects Roles and Users to Actions. The Actions table has a list of available tasks that a User or a user with a Role can perform. So for example, if user_id = 1 can perform a list_folder action (action_id = 1), then the permissions table would have an entry: (id=1, action_id=1, user_id=1, role_id=NULL). Likewise, suppose an owner_role (role_id=1) might have permissions to perform a list_folder action (action_id=1), then the permissions entry might be: (id=2, action_id=1, user_id=NULL, role_id=1).
When I do an insert, I want to make sure that I do not already have that exact combination (e.g. action_id=1, user_id=NULL, role_id=1). And I'm not entirely sure how to write the sql so that I have this setup properly.
Here's my basic insert statement. I need to come up with an insert and a replace statement:
INSERT INTO permissions (
action_id
,role_id
)
SELECT DISTINCT
a.id as "action_id"
,r.id as "role_id"
FROM tmp_permissions tmp
LEFT OUTER JOIN actions a
ON tmp.action_name = a.name
LEFT OUTER JOIN roles r
ON tmp.roles_name = r.name
LEFT OUTER JOIN permissions p
ON p.role_id
Here are some creation sql statements for the tables:
CREATE TABLE permissions (
id INTEGER NOT NULL,
enabled INTEGER,
action_id INTEGER,
user_id INTEGER,
role_id INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
FOREIGN KEY(user_id) REFERENCES users (id),
FOREIGN KEY(action_id) REFERENCES actions (id),
FOREIGN KEY(role_id) REFERENCES roles (id)
);
CREATE TABLE actions (
id INTEGER NOT NULL,
enabled INTEGER,
name VARCHAR(50),
permission_ids INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
FOREIGN KEY(permission_ids) REFERENCES permissions (id)
);
CREATE TABLE roles (
id INTEGER NOT NULL,
enabled INTEGER,
name VARCHAR(50),
permission_ids INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
FOREIGN KEY(permission_ids) REFERENCES permissions (id)
);
CREATE TABLE users (
id INTEGER NOT NULL,
enabled INTEGER,
name VARCHAR(50),
permission_ids INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (id),
FOREIGN KEY(permission_ids) REFERENCES permissions (id)
);
Here's a temp table I'm using to store the data in the table while I work with it:
CREATE TABLE tmp_permissions(
roles_name VARCHAR(50),
action_name VARCHAR(50)
);
Here's some data:
#role|action
admin|setup
admin|debug
admin|login
admin|view_user
manager|view_employee
manager|enroll_employee
manager|login
employee|schedule
employee|login
customer|guest_login
customer|change_credentials
guest|guest_login
Thanks in advance!
Add a UNIQUE constraint to the table:
CREATE TABLE permissions(
... ,
UNIQUE (action_id, user_id, role_id)
)
You can then use any of the conflict resolution algorithms to handle duplicates.

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