how to save marital relationship in a database

Question

I have to save this information in a database

Person -> is married to -> Person

Where should I save that information? What is the proper design pattern shoul

Answer 1

Here is a hypothetical schema you can use. All people are in a single table, and each person has a unique id. Marriages are in a relationship table, with foreign keys.

PERSONS
- ID - INTEGER, PK
- FIRSTNAME - VARCHAR(20)
- LASTNAME - VARCHAR(20)
- SEX - CHAR(1)
- ... any other fields

MARRIAGES
- PERSON1_ID - INTEGER, FK
- PERSON2_ID - INTEGER, FK
- MARRIAGE_DATE - DATE
- ANULLMENT_DATE - DATE
- ... any other fields