[Rails] Re: Advice on data design idea

Thanks Marnen -

> Er, why? Why does a cargo trailer belong in a boating category?
> I have the impression, here as in your earlier post, that your category
> hierarchy may be in need of some normalization.

I may need to rethink the data structure, but as of now the site calls
for categories to be able to be found under multiple sections.
Customers sometimes search for items under different categories kind
of like aliases. So in the case of the cargo trailer its definitely
automotive, but some marinas may be used to finding tool/cargo
trailers within the marine category. Rather than have duplicate
categories, it would be best to share the same category.

>> How can it be overkill? It's the exact data structure you're talking
about.

Understood but after looking into various DAG databases and methods I
think it would be better to find a way to normalize or restructure the
data to utilize something better supported such as one parent per node
setup such as awesome_nested_set or ancestry.

I am wondering, what about simply manually defining the categories for
my root sections? For instance:

automotive = [cat1, cat2, cat3, etc...]

Essentially create 'virtual' sections. This will keep my categories
simple yet allow me to 'group' a category into multiple virtual
sections when the needed.

Can I get an amen or should I go stand back in the corner? :-)

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