Database design for a simple association I'm not so good in db/tables design, I'm mainly a frontend web developer, but sometimes I do really small apps. Always I find myself wondering if my thinkings are correct.. So I try to ask here :)

The db is for an app for helping a local association to manage its associates and their annual cards/subscriptions. Basically:


Once associated, the person is an associate forever (no need to renew every year)
Still, the associated needs an annual card to participate to the association's activities. So he/she needs to eventually renew his/her subscription to the activities, yearly. It's not mandatory, though: he's not forced to renew every year. He can be associated without having the current year subscription/card.


So, one associate can have many cards (one per year). One Card can have only one Associate.

I imagined just 2 tables:

Associates
   id
   name
   surname
   etc...


Cards
   associate_id
   year


It should be enough. But, should I maybe instead use a Year table? I'm not really sure this would be any useful in this specific case. Also I would then have a many-many relation between years and associates, so I guess I would need a third table (YearAssociate).

What do you think?
No, adding a year table would add nothing to this data model.

Think about what a Year table would be like. What columns might it have? It really only has the year number itself - 2018, 2019 .. 2031, 2032 etc. Cards would then have a foreign key to this table, which the currently existing column Cards.Year already represents.

If you were doing a logical data model you may choose to put the Year entity type in it. For a physical database implementation &amp; table design there is no need to implement a Year table.

One caveat - if your years are not calendar years, and you care about the calendar dates that each membership year starts and end, then having a separate Year table makes sense. Think about the tax year. It starts in, say, calendar April and runs to the following calendar March. So tax year and calendar year do not cover the same set of days.