I'm working on building an attribute system for products. The issue that I'm running into is that various products can have very different attribute requirements.

Some E-commerce websites such as Magento use an EAV system. That's something that I'd like to avoid due to performance issues, database cleanliness/complexity/control.

So far I'm leaning towards using a variety of tables. For example I might have a table of attributes that pertain to medical devices and then a different table that is for toys and games. Any attributes that are generic would just fall into the actual product table. If I do choose to go with this option, then I suppose my product table would have a column which represents which attribute table is used.

I'm not actually a Database Administrator, so I don't really know what's best. I hope that someone is able to give me some insights into a good implementation or acknowledge that my current thought process is in the right direction.

Thank you