Design a database schema for an online merch store

Designing a database schema for an online merchandise store involves several key tables to handle products, customers, orders, and potentially reviews and shipping details. Here’s a simplified schema that covers the basic entities and their relationships:

1. Users
   • UserID (Primary Key)
   • FirstName
   • LastName
   • Email
   • PasswordHash
   • IsAdmin (Boolean to identify if the user is an admin)
2. Products
   • ProductID (Primary Key)
   • Name
   • Description
   • Price
   • StockQuantity
   • CategoryID (Foreign Key)
   • ImageURL
3. Categories
   • CategoryID (Primary Key)
   • CategoryName
   • Description
4. Orders
   • OrderID (Primary Key)
   • UserID (Foreign Key)
   • OrderDate
   • Status
   • TotalAmount
5. OrderDetails
   • OrderDetailID (Primary Key)
   • OrderID (Foreign Key)
   • ProductID (Foreign Key)
   • Quantity
   • UnitPrice
6. Reviews
   • ReviewID (Primary Key)
   • UserID (Foreign Key)
   • ProductID (Foreign Key)
   • Rating
   • Comment
   • ReviewDate
7. ShippingDetails
   • ShippingID (Primary Key)
   • OrderID (Foreign Key)
   • AddressLine1
   • AddressLine2
   • City
   • State
   • Country
   • PostalCode
   • ShippingMethod
   • Cost
   • EstimatedDeliveryDate

Relationships:

• A User can have multiple Orders.
• An Order contains multiple OrderDetails.
• An OrderDetail corresponds to a single Product.
• A Product can belong to one Category.
• A Product can have multiple Reviews.
• Each Review is written by a single User.
• An Order has one ShippingDetail.

Notes:

• Products: Each product has a foreign key linking to its category. If you plan on supporting multiple images per product, you might want to have a separate ProductImages table.
• OrderDetails: This is a junction table that contains the many-to-many relationship between orders and products, including the quantity of each product ordered and the price at which it was sold.
• Reviews: Reviews link users to products. You might want to include a timestamp for when the review was written.
• ShippingDetails: You might consider normalizing this table further by separating out addresses into their own table if you expect users to have multiple shipping addresses.

Here’s a simple ERD (Entity-Relationship Diagram) representing the schema:

+----------+     +---------+     +-----------+
|   User   |     | Product |     | Category  |
+----------+     +---------+     +-----------+
| UserID   |1   *| ProductID|1   *| CategoryID|
| FirstName|-----| Name     |-----| CategoryName|
| LastName |     | Description |  | Description  |
| Email    |     | Price    |     +-----------+
| PasswordHash|  | StockQuantity|
| IsAdmin   |   | CategoryID |
+----------+     | ImageURL   |
                 +---------+
                     |1
                     |
                     |*
                 +----------+
                 | Order    |
                 +----------+
                 | OrderID  |
                 | UserID   |
                 | OrderDate|
                 | Status   |
                 | TotalAmount|
                 +----------+
                    |1
                    |
                    |*
               +------------+ 1     +---------+ 1
               | OrderDetail|--------| Review  |
               +------------+        +---------+
               | OrderDetailID |-----| ReviewID |
               | OrderID      |*    1| UserID  |
               | ProductID    |------| ProductID|
               | Quantity     |      | Rating   |
               | UnitPrice    |      | Comment  |
               +------------+        | ReviewDate|
                                      +---------+