Father/Mother/Son

[endri81]

I have to put in database data about father/mother/son.
They have similar data like name,surname,birthday and different data like employment etc.


Which is a good practice for arranging these data?

[pbaldy]

The first one that comes to me is a record for each person, with fields for the mother and father. Those fields would contain the ID of those people. In your example the family would have 3 records in the table. This is about horses, but same concept (the primary table tblHorses):

http://allenbrowne.com/ser-06.html

[NTC]

PB's info is correct and Allen Browne is a real pro. The answer kind of depends on how elaborate of cross referencing you seek to establish. A true geneology approach can get quite interestingly complicated as one gets into cousins & inlaws and such - - while simply linking single families together as a unit by a unique family ID - and then each's role in that family via a descriptor (ie. Father) can be very simple.