Database Design

My first thoughts on the design of the database. I went through the specs and I think I covered everything we need for the functions necessary. There may be some unnecessary things, such as keeping password hashes (if there is a authentication gem we can use). Also, I starred any fields that would be calculated for performance reasons (many more views of vote counts than updates would be worth the slight denormalization and upkeep).

Tables

Users

• user_id
• first_name
• last_name
• email_address
• password_hash

Posts

• post_id
• post_text
• creation_user_id (FK)
• vote_count (*)
• creation_date_time

Post_Votes

• post_id (FK)
• user_id (FK)

Reply

• reply_id
• post_id (FK)
• creation_user_id (FK)
• reply_text
• creation_date_time
• vote_count (*)

Reply_Votes

• reply_id (FK)
• user_id (FK)

Administrator

• admin_id
• user_id (FK)