There's probably a better forum for this, but honestly, I don't want any more accounts, so I'm just gonna float it here and see if someone knows. I'm having a hard time googling for answers because I keep using the word "keyword."

I've never really used any kind of database before, but I want to learn the basics, so I'm playing with it a little bit at work. What I want to do is make a database to hold information on various articles. For example, with columns for the title, author, and date. Those are all easy. The tricky part is that I'd also like to be able to label articles with keywords so I can search for certain topics.

Since there's no way to know ahead of time how many keywords, if any, each article might warrant, I'm not sure how to put this in database form. There's no variable-sized array data type. It seems sloppy to just list them all in a single VARCHAR column. Making several columns that may or may not be left null and putting one keyword in each seems wasteful.

Any thoughts?

I confess up front that it has been a while since I used MySQL or any other SQL (ah, for the days of dBase).

I don't see any reason why you can't have just one VARCHAR field for all keywords. Make the field long enough to hold what you expect to be the maximum number of characters plus delimiter(s). No spaces between keyword and delimiter would probably be a good idea also. In your query, specify the keywords and the delimiter. It may seem sloppy, but that's the way it's done to minimize the amount of wasted disk space (in re your comment about using multiple keyword columns)

Hint: sit with pen and paper. Look through a variety of articles and choose keywords for each article. Write them down, one article after another. Then decide which articles could still be found by reducing the number of keywords (and characters/delimiters). Then adjust the size of the field accordingly.

Sounds good. I have no real objection to doing it that way, but I wanted to get the opinion of someone who has done this before (even if it's been a while). I've done a lot of object-oriented programming, so when I can't just write a class that suits my data, I get a little lost...

Thanks!