title: Multiple databases tables or combined into one
body: <p>I have a question about database architecture. </p>
  
  <p>We are building a CMS. There are a lot of fields that will have pre-populated selections. An example is Customer's Credit Status can be "Good","Bad","Unknown", or "Take a Deposit". A spec of the project is that these pre-populated selections be dynamic, that the admin can add new values via the backend. So I need to store these values in the database.</p>
  
  <p>I am struggling to decide between two approaches</p>
  
  <p>1) Have a table for each kind of list. Example would be tables like list_CrediStatus, list_Branches, list_Markets, etc. </p>
  
  <p>Advantages are that the tables are not huge and they are separate from one another. Therefore data and query load on one table might not effect the others? Disadvantages are that there will be many of them. Maybe 30? And that there will need to be a query per table.</p>
  
  <p>2) Have two tables. Have a description table where you get to define all the different list names (list_CreditStatus, list_Branches, etc.) Have another table contains all the values of all lists plus a foreign key that links each row to its identifier in the description table.</p>
  
  <p>Advantages are less tables, 1 query and uniformed format. The disadvantages might be in performance. This table will need to be queried a lot. It will have many rows and a lot of data. </p>
  
  <p>Does anyone have any advice? I am leaning towards Option 2. Also let me know if this does not make sense. It was a hard question to write clearly. </p>
  
  <p>Thanks,
  Jed </p>