Is a relational database with many-to-many relationships difficult to develop into a web app?
8th February 2011
My answer to Is a relational database with many-to-many relationships difficult to develop into a web app? on Quora
Many to Many tables can be a bit of a pain to deal with using regular SQL, but a good ORM can abstract away any potential complexity almost entirely. I find using the Django ORM means I’m much less likely to shy away from a design that involves a many-to-many relationship because I know it won’t increase the complexity of the application. I imagine the Rails ORM has the same effect.
More recent articles
- Anthropic's Project Glasswing - restricting Claude Mythos to security researchers - sounds necessary to me - 7th April 2026
- The Axios supply chain attack used individually targeted social engineering - 3rd April 2026
- Highlights from my conversation about agentic engineering on Lenny's Podcast - 2nd April 2026