Suggestion for show_item.php: Which recipe components are store bought?

[Neebat]

Hmm, that's doable as well, actually. The only problem is that this breaks good database handling procedures (essentially, we're duplicating data, and there's a chance it could get out of sync).

The goal in designing a good data model includes minimizing duplication, but eliminating it is rarely the right answer. *Most* of the time, there is a performance reason to maintain at least one set of information in more than one place.

With luck, the database engine will do this for you. Look up materialized view for an example. (Which might solve this problem, but you can't use it.) Triggers are frequently used to automate the duplication. Even indexes themselves are duplicate data, and every database worth its salt does those. An expensive commercial engine like Oracle will do a lot more of that maintenance for you than a quality free product like MySQL.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Our host is already unhappy with the memory usage of this site (we do not have a dedicated server... because I don't know enough about server maintenance to go that way, the cost is only very slightly more than we pay now, but there is less "support" of the "how the heck does this work" variety on the dedicated server.), which is possibly because of poor programing on my part (I have never had formal training in calling MySQL from PHP and may be using up too much memory there) So if we add it it may have to be something that gets removed if the Host complains. Though the query may be easy, it is yet another table to hit, if even just minimally.