desing the database for survey app with various types of answers I have to create a survey app for which answers should be stored in the database. I created an html form containing some questions (about 30) with various types of answers (check boxes, radio buttons, auto-complete, etc). Now, I am going to design my database.

First, I thought of only 3 tables : Questions, Answers, Users . However after I searched some similar questions such as :Database design for a survey, db design - survey/quiz with questions and answers [closed] I found some other design models e.g creating 4 tables : Questions, PossibleAnswers, UsersAnswers and Users. Now, I have these questions:


Should I create a survey table too ? (at this moment,there is only
one survey for my app, but not sure about the future.)
Which design model would be better in my case?
In case of using the first model, should I create specific column for
each types of answer? (for instance, consider this question: which
are your favorite movie genres? and it has more than 10 possible
answers! then if I want to create a column for each possible answers
of all questions, it would be lots of columns!)
In case of the second model, is it correct? (this is what I
understood from other similar questions, but still I am not sure if
it is useful form me and if yes, what is the advantage of this
model?)

Questions: questionId, question

PossibleAnswers: possibleanswerId, questionId, possibleanswer

UsersAnswers: useranswerId, possibleanswerId, userId, answer

Users: userId, username, password


I really appreciate all your ideas and suggestions
I think you should have the Survey table as it will be much easier to add it now than later on when your app is live.

The second model is much better as it provides the flexibility to have multiple possible answers and user answers for a single question in a normalised fashion. Having a column for each answer is not a good idea.