Normalization makes your data model less brittle, and can speed certain classes of updates and deletes.
<?php
/* CREATE TABLE users (
userid int not null auto_increment,
name varchar(128),
primary key(userid)
);
CREATE TABLE attributes (
userid int not null,
key varchar(128),
value varchar(128)
);
*/
function get_user($userid) {
mysql_query("SELECT name FROM users
WHERE userid = $userid");
$userid->name = mysql_fetch();
mysql_query("SELECT key, value
FROM attributes a
WHERE userid = $userid");
while(list($key, $value) = mysql_fetch()) {
$userinfo[$key] = $value;
}
return $userinfo;
}
?>
