What is the most efficient way to store tags in a database?

Question

I am implementing a tagging system on my website similar to one stackoverflow uses, my question is - what is the most effective way to store tags so that they may be searche

Answer 1

If you don't mind using a bit of non-standard stuff, Postgres version 9.4 and up has an option of storing a record of type JSON text array.

Your schema would be:

Table: Items
Columns: Item_ID:int, Title:text, Content:text

Table: Tags
Columns: Item_ID:int, Tag_Title:text[]

For more info, see this excellent post by Josh Berkus: http://www.databasesoup.com/2015/01/tag-all-things.html

There are more various options compared thoroughly for performance and the one suggested above is the best overall.