I'm working on a project for school where we need to create a helpdesk website. I've set up a users table with an auto-incrementing ID for each user, but I'm considering adding a separate client number column that is also auto-incremented. I'm using phpMyAdmin and MariaDB. I've seen some AI-generated solutions, but I'd love to get insights from someone with real-world experience.
2 Answers
Why don't you just use the auto-incremented ID as the client number too? You can easily format it as a 10-digit number if that’s a requirement. It could simplify things instead of adding another layer.
Are the client and user considered separate entities? It sounds like you might be able to organize them that way. If you're handling different roles, a single table could become cluttered, and separating them could streamline your queries.
I'm keeping everything in one table and just differentiating by roles. Do you think I should actually create separate tables instead?
I thought about that, but I feel the client number should be more user-friendly for identification, separate from the ID used in queries. Would it be wiser to go with just the client number?