Data modeling question

Question

My clients use one of the following when they sign up for my application:

1. Foo API (requires a \"auth_key\", \"passwor

Answer 1

If I understand the case correctly, it looks like yet another case of the gen-spec design pattern. Look up "generalization specialization relational modeling".

Tutorials on object modeling usually cover gen-spec, but tutorials on relational modeling often do not. But it's well understood, and there are some excellent articles on the web.