When should you consider separating data into multiple tables in PHP applications?

When your data starts to become complex or when you have related data that can be organized more efficiently, it's a good idea to consider separating data into multiple tables in PHP applications. This can help improve data organization, reduce redundancy, and make querying and managing data more efficient. 

// Example PHP code snippet to demonstrate separating data into multiple tables

// Connect to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Create two tables: users and orders
$sql_users = "CREATE TABLE users (
    id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    username VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    email VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL
)";

$sql_orders = "CREATE TABLE orders (
    id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    user_id INT(6) UNSIGNED,
    order_date TIMESTAMP,
    total_amount DECIMAL(10,2),
    FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES users(id)
)";

// Execute the SQL queries to create the tables
$conn->query($sql_users);
$conn->query($sql_orders);

// Close the database connection
$conn->close();

Keywords

database normalization relational database foreign key primary key data integrity

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