Database Design: A proper table design for large number of column values.

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Published on 2008-10-03T20:48:01Z Indexed on 2010/05/02 1:27 UTC
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database-design

I wish to perform an experiment many different times. After every trial, I am left with a "large" set of output statistics -- let's say, 1000. I would like to store the outputs of my experiments in a table, but what's the best way...?

Option 1

Have a table with 1000 columns. Seems like a bad idea. What if the number of statistics one day exceeds the maximum number of columns?

Option 2

Have a table with three columns. Let's say, ID, StatisticType, and StatisticValue. That way, you can have as many statistics as you want. However, reading a single experiments statistics becomes more complicated. Moreover, what if different statistics are different data types??

Any suggestions?

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