What's the best database structure to keep multilingual data?

Possible Duplicate:
Schema for a multilanguage database

Here's an example:

[ products ]
id (INT)
name-en_us (VARCHAR)
name-es_es (VARCHAR)
name-pt_br (VARCHAR)
description-en_us (VARCHAR)
description-es_es (VARCHAR)
description-pt_br (VARCHAR)
price (DECIMAL)

The problem: every new language will need modify the table structure.

Here's another example:

[ products-en_us ]
id (INT)
name (VARCHAR)
description (VARCHAR)
price (DECIMAL)

[ products-es_es ]
id (INT)
name (VARCHAR)
description (VARCHAR)
price (DECIMAL)

The problem: every new language will need the creation of new tables and the "price" field is duplicated in every table.

Here's another example:

[ languages ]
id (INT)
name (VARCHAR)

[ products ]
id (INT)
price (DECIMAL)

[ translation ]
id (INT, PK)
model (VARCHAR) // product
field (VARCHAR) // name
language_id (INT, FK) 
text (VARCHAR)

The problem: fuc*ing hard?


Your third example is actually the way the problem is usually solved. Hard, but doable.

Remove the reference to product from the translation table and put a reference to translation where you need it (the other way around).

[ products ]
id (INT)
price (DECIMAL)
title_translation_id (INT, FK)

[ translation ]
id (INT, PK)
neutral_text (VARCHAR)
-- other properties that may be useful (date, creator etc.)

[ translation_text ]
translation_id (INT, FK)
language_id (INT, FK) 
text (VARCHAR)

As an alternative (not especially a good one) you can have one single field and keep all translations there merged together (as XML, for example).

<translation>
  <en>Supplier</en>
  <de>Lieferant</de>
  <fr>Fournisseur</fr>
</translation>

Similar to method 3:

[languages]
id (int PK)
code (varchar)

[products]
id (int PK)
neutral_fields (mixed)

[products_t]
id (int FK)
language (int FK)
translated_fields (mixed)
PRIMARY KEY: id,language

So for each table, make another table (in my case with "_t" suffix) which holds the translated fields. When you SELECT * FROM products , simply ... LEFT JOIN products_t ON products_t.id = products.id AND products_t.language = CURRENT_LANGUAGE .

Not that hard, and keeps you free from headaches.


为了减少JOIN的数量,您可以将翻译和非翻译保留在2个独立的表格中:

[ products ]
id (INT)
price (DECIMAL)

[ products_i18n ]
id (INT)
name (VARCHAR)
description (VARCHAR)
lang_code (CHAR(5))
链接地址: http://www.djcxy.com/p/37436.html

上一篇: 手动添加导航属性

下一篇: 什么是保持多语言数据的最佳数据库结构?