Customers and suppliers database design issue

Posted by hectorsq on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by hectorsq
Published on 2009-04-13T18:19:35Z Indexed on 2010/05/29 7:12 UTC
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database-design

I am developing a web application in which I will have customers and suppliers.

Initially I thought on using a Customers table and a Suppliers table.

Then when I was thinking on bank transactions, I noticed that each transaction needs to refer to a customer or a supplier, so I thought on using a single table named Business in which I will save both customers and suppliers.

If I use Customers and Suppliers tables when I want to list the bank transactions I will have to search in both tables to get the company name.

If I use a Businesses table I will have to use a business type column, and have the union of possible fields for all businesses types.

Any suggestions on the design?

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