I am designing a database structure for a mailing list.
The data I need to record is the mail recipient data:
Since the mail recipient data is not predefined, it is causing a problem.
For example, some of the recipients have name, mail address, phone number, while others have name, birth date, mail address, gender, etc...
So my design is like this:
Table Receiver: PK: ReceiverID AttributeID DataID Table Attribute: PK: AttributeID AttributeName Table Data: PK: DataID DataContent
An example of one recipient is:
Receiver: 1 1 1 Attribute: 1 mailAddress Data:1 email@example.com Receiver: 1 2 2 Attribute: 2 Name Data:2 Tony
This is causing a problem because I want to check the data field type and length. What is a better database design?
Sorry about the poor description, I will clarify it if you are confused.