DataBase design for store anketing data

Question

my English is not well, so sorry for it. I want to write the web-app for anketing. I mean, that it must be a site, where user may give answers on different questions. For example, it can be question with text type of answer, or checkbox, or lookup (comboBox).

And my problem is in data base architecture. I read a lot about Entity Attribute Value db pattern, One True Lookup Table I also read. But these patterns has problem (with ms sql) when building a sql-query for data selecting (report).

I hope somebody give me a good suggestion, and tell, what can I do with this proplem.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Almost everything can be represented as a string. Why not store a string in the database e.g. Text Type Answer or "true" "false" or ComboBox Value etc. Then simply convert the value from the database if necessary at runtime or in SQL if writing a query?

I feel Entity Attribute Value pattern is meant more for Entities which can have dynamic fields added etc, not so much for the problem you've posed here.

If necessary you could also add an additional column to the database table to specify the "type" of data being stored. You could then use that column to base your query convert statements on etc.