Hi everyone,

We are currently planning the database structure of a quite complex e-commerce web app that has flexibility as it's main cornerstone.

Our app features a large amount of data (products) and we have run into a slight headache trying to keep performance high without compromizing normalization rules in the database, or leaving our highly beloved flexibility concept behind when integrating product options (also widely known as product attributes or parameters).

Based on various references and sources available, we have made up lists on pros and cons of all major and well known database patterns to solve this. After comparing these, we have come up with two final alternatives:

• EAV (Entity-attribute-value model) :

  Pros: Database is used for all sorting.

  Cons: All related queries will include a number of joins between multiple tables in order to complete the collection of data.

• SLOB (Serialized LOB, also known as Facade?) :

  Pros: Very flexible. Keeping the number of necessary joins low compared to a EAV design pattern. Easy to update/add/remove data from each product.

  Cons: All sorting will be done by the application instead of the database. Will use lots of performance (memory?) when big datasets is processed by a large number of users.

Our main questions:

• Which pattern/structure would you use, or maybe even a different solution?
• Is there better databases besides mySQL available nowadays to accomplish what we want?

Thanks a lot!

Reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/695752/product-table-many-kinds-of-product-each-product-has-many-parameters