[FIXED] Spring Boot: Altering database tables at runtime

Issue

Currently developing a web application using Spring Boot where a user is expected to upload .CSV files with contacts to populate the database.

• Each .CSV file (contacts list) may have a different set of columns (Such as: Name, Email, Address, etc..).
• Each list may contain thousands of records.
• The application involves reading and writing each of the lists individually.
• The app also must provide for insertion/deletion of columns.

Question 1: what is the best approach to insert such data to the database?

So far I could think of two options:

Having a single table which will contain all the data from all of the lists.

OR

Create a new table for every new list.

Question 2: Whilst the first option is easy to implement using Spring Boot's JPA + Hibernate, I'm not sure how to approach the second one. Since the fields are different from list to list, we cannot provide a resource representation class. Any suggestions?

Question 3: Having resource representation classes and using Hibernate is it even possible to dynamically alter database tables (insertion/deletion of columns)?

Solution

I think you should use MongoDB as your database because it saves data in JSON format, record fields can be different from each other, so maybe in your case it is a good choice.

Answered By - Amir Pezeshk