How to update a one-to-many relationship from a CheckBoxList, ListBox, etc?

Question

Given 2 tables:

Person

PersonsFavoriteColors

A person can have one or more favorite colors. These colors are updated with a multi-select control (CheckBoxList, ListBox w/ multi-select enabled).

In the past, if I am updating the person's colors, I'd:

1. Start Transaction
2. Delete all color records for the person
3. Insert records for each selected color
4. Commit Transaction

Is this the standard and best practice for handling multi-select controls that add / update / delete records in "to-many" child tables?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I normally wouldn't delete all the old colours but rather just the ones that were no longer favourites and then I'd only add the ones that were actually new.

Answer 2

If you're not locked in to two tables, a relatively simple way to store values the way you've described is to use an array as the data type of favorite colors instead of a separate table.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/interactive/arrays.html

If that is an acceptable option, your updating instructions would simply be:

1. Start Transaction
2. Update Row
3. Commit Transaction