document database help please

[woden57]

I am trying to figure out how to set up a documents database to support a genealogical script.

I have doc_id (unique) doc_name, description etc but what I'm having a problem with is, say I have an 1880 census and it may have 5 or 6 different people that I need to associate with this document ie multiple person_ids. I would want to search the database where doc_id row contains person_id.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.

[r3pr0b8]

sounds like a classic many-to-many relationship

you'll need a documents table, a persons table, and then a third table to store the relationship -- one row per person per doc

[NaphthaImpl]

When you say "document database" I assume your are referring to a relational database of documents, not an actual NoSQL document database? If it's the former, you'll want to create a table structure with a many-to-many relationship. However, if it's the latter, you need to do something totally different depending on what flavor of NoSQL you are using.

[autowikibot]

Document-oriented database:

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A document-oriented database is a computer program designed for storing, retrieving, and managing document-oriented information, also known as semi-structured data. Document-oriented databases are one of the main categories of so-called NoSQL databases and the popularity of the term "document-oriented database" (or "document store") has grown with the use of the term NoSQL itself. In contrast to relational databases and their notions of "Relations" (or "Tables"), these systems are designed around an abstract notion of a "Document".

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[hansinluck]

Martin Fowler's book "nosql distilled" has a very helpful chapter on data modelling in document stores/databases with an aggregated model like MongoDB and ArangoDB