What is the best way to organize data in a database?

Question

MySQL

I find it difficult to choose the option of saving data to a MySQL table:
There is a questions table that stores the question and answer options.

I can turn the options array into a view string "['first', 'second']"and then store it in the `options` cell of the questions table. And I can create another table with these options and the question_id column (but this will result in 2 queries)

Which is better?

Answer 1

Only separate tables, and answers with questions can be obtained with one request (if there was a desire):

create table questions (
  id int primary key auto_increment,
  question varchar(255)
);

create table question_options (
  id int primary key auto_increment,
  question_id int,
  answer varchar(255)
);

select 
  q.question,
  json_arrayagg(answer) answers
from questions q
join question_options qo on qo.question_id = q.id
group by q.id, q.question
;

Result:

+=============+============================+
| question    | answers                    |
+=============+============================+
| Question 1? | ["Answer 1?", "Answer 2?"] |
+-------------+----------------------------+
| Question 2? | ["Answer 3?", "Answer 4?"] |
+-------------+----------------------------+

Check SQL query

Answer 2

Better separate table