seeking help - normalization issue ... i think

[Jeff Sabarese]

i don't think i would normally have a problem with this, but for some reason this is driving me buggy-- and i can't seem to grasp what i need to do here.

i have an existing set of Widgets. Each Widget has 8 characterists. Currently-- i'm trying to do this with One table, but i think that's my problem-- but i'm not certain.

my table has 10 fields.
field1 = auto_increment primary key (allow for new widget listings)
field2 = unique index, WidgetNameID (already populated)
fields 3 - 10 are characteristics of a Widget

app purpose:
- offer HTML form for populating widget characteristic fields.
- allow user to check for Widgets which have existing, complete, partially complete, or empty descriptions
- provide form for inserting or updating data based on state of widget characteristic fields (empty, full and correct, full and incorrect)

my confusion:
while trying to write my PHP app's logic statement for determining if the Widget's charateristic field is empty or full, i realize that the PHP function mysql_num_rows (extent of my PHP knowledge as an novice to intermediate user) will NOT work in this instance because my widgets of course have already created these rows when i populated a field w/ the list of their names.

suggestions? do you need me to explain more before you can help? thanks so much!!

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2005 04:19AM by Jeff Sabarese.