Database Design - Drop Down Menus

Question

Hello alll,
I'm designing the database of Tire Store. We need to manage the Items and the Price List.
The tire has many specifications, ex: Category, Aspect Ratio, Origin, Pattern, Ply, etc
Each one of these specifications has a list of values (Drop Down Menus).
The Item table is as follows; ITEM( Category_ID, Aspect Ratio_ID, Origin_ID, Pattern_ID, Ply_ID)
Which solution is better:
- I create one table for each specification that takes the value as a primary key directly cuz the values are unique for every spec.
so will have ITEM('LVR', 65, 'JP', 'AL2', 12);
- I create one table that contains all drop down values together, ex:
SPECS(ID, NAME), ex: SPEC(1, 'Category'); SPEC(2, 'Aspect Ratio); etc.
DDMS(ID, SPEC_ID, SPEC_VALUE), ex: DDMS(1, 1, 'LVR'); DDMS(2, 1, 'MLS'); DDMS(3, 2, 'MLS'); etc.
ITEM( Category_ID, Aspect Ratio_ID, Origin_ID, Pattern_ID, Ply_ID) becomes
ITEM(DDM_ID, DDM_ID, DDM_ID, etc)
I think the first solution is more convenient, less joins and the ID is the same as value, but i need to create many tables for that, I have 10 specs means 10 tables.
Ur opinion please

Answer 1

Have you done any research on database normalization? You may want to read about it.
In my opinion you would have different entities/tables for category, aspect ratio, origin, pattern and ply. These would all be related via foreign key to a tire entity/table. That way when you want to provide a drop down menu for aspect ratio, you don't have to search through the entire combined entity/table that you were suggesting. You'll only have to query the aspect ratio entity.
There is nothing wrong with doing joins that are necessary. You could always encapsulate frequently run queries in a view.
Hope this helps!