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This is my first MYSQL schema for caching location data (co-ordinates to place names) and referencing it with a country.

I was wondering what everyones feedback was on it, did I do a good job?

CREATE TABLE location (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
locality VARCHAR(20),
administrative_area_level_1 VARCHAR(20),
administrative_area_level_2 VARCHAR(20),
administrative_area_level_3 VARCHAR(20),
loc VARCHAR (17) NOT NULL,
rad VARCHAR (17),
updated TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);

CREATE TABLE country (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(20),
iso VARCHAR(20),
loc VARCHAR (17) NOT NULL,
rad VARCHAR (17),
updated TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);
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    \$\begingroup\$ are these two tables linked? I don't see a Foreign key or anything to link the tables together. I do see 2 columns that have the same name in both tables? \$\endgroup\$
    – Malachi
    Oct 17, 2013 at 17:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ Idem. Your query is ambiguous for Code Review. I would personally expect a country.id column as foreign key in location but may or may not be the case depending on your schema design. \$\endgroup\$
    – Phrancis
    May 21, 2014 at 5:09

1 Answer 1

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For all it's worth, and this is pretty old but for the sake of clearing unanswered reviews, here is my take:

  • id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,

    I find that being more specific in column names makes the code easier to work with, especially when you are using JOIN and table aliases. Suppose the following:

    SELECT l.*, c.*
    FROM location AS l
    LEFT JOIN country AS c
    ON l.loc = c.loc
    

    The result set would have column headers as l.id and c.id unless you took the time to make column aliases for everything. If your columns were instead named location_id and country_id the result set would be much easier to read to someone who is not a database programmer.

  • name VARCHAR(20)

    I think 20 may be a bit short for country name. For instance:

    SELECT CHAR_LENGTH('United States of America');
    

    Result: 24

Other than that I think it looks fine.

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