There are 50 exams to be written by around millions of students online, One person may or may not write more than one exam. A person can also write a single exam more than one time ( retries ) ..
So which of the below solution is better for this case, I am okay with a better solution than these two as well
Option 1. Store each exam in a single table :
Subject 1
+----------------+---------+
| student id | Marks |
+----------------+---------+
| 1 | 85 |
| 2 | 32 |
| 2 | 60 |
+----------------+---------+
Subject 2
+----------------+---------+
| student id | Marks |
+----------------+---------+
| 1 | 85 |
| 2 | 32 |
| 2 | 60 |
+----------------+---------+
Like above with each table will have the student id only if that particular person has taken that exam , and have multiple occurrences of the student id if he has taken it more than once.
Option 2 :
+----------------+---------+---------+
| student id | Subject | Marks |
+----------------+---------+---------+
| 1 | Subj1 | 85 |
| 2 | Subj1 | 32 |
| 2 | Subj1 | 60 |
| 1 | Subj2 | 80 |
| 3 | Subj2 | 90 |
+----------------+---------+---------+
with all the values in a single table.
Which is better in terms of performance and storage perspective.
My various que
I think the best here is following:
Table STUDENT with information about students
Table EXAM with information about exams
Table EXAM_TRY with reference to STUDENT and EXAM tables, and fields DATE_OF_EXAM and RESULT_OF_EXAM
2 indexes on foreign keys in table EXAM_TRY
Depending on situation - index on date field (for example, you would need it for planning work for examiners)