MySQL: Tagging, Folksonomies and Hierarchical data

Since joining a web 2.0-ish company I found myself needing to solve web 2.0-ish problems viz. tagging, folksonomies and other fluffy concepts.

If you’re smart you’ll use you’re refined skills to come up with a solution. Then much later on you’ll realize the painful cons and/or scalability issues. But if you team up those skills with a bit of laziness you’ll find  “storing hierarchical data in a relational database” :-)

Great programmers are lazy (so, I believe)

Jay Pipes has insightful pointers on tagging and folksonomy with specific reference to MySQL. See also  managing hierarchical data in MySQL found on the MySQL website

Both useful and insightful resources will save you the time and pain. The folks who sign your paycheck will praise you for no-sweat effort built on proven methodology that also scales. “Well done. You’re a great programmer” they’ll say. Nothing wrong with that, ay?