Hello ... for the very first time :-) Finally I'm at the point to need a database for an application. I decided for SQLite, read the tutorials and documentation, but would like to ask the experts if my first steps would be right. As I would like to avoid to choose a wrong design at first step. It's about a labeling/ tagging application. For any file (of up to several hundred thousands) at a filesystem there shall be made an assignment/ labeling to some of about 50 labels. Also this labeling shall be queried like: Which items are assigned to a (subset of labels)? Which labels are assigned to a (subset of items)? But also more complex like: Sort all subsets of labels by the count of items they are assigned to. ... etc. My "idea" is to model it like this: One table for the items (consisting only of its name = location). One table for each label (consisting of only the ids of the item table). Simple enough. But will the queries from items to labels be fast enough? As there is no "backward link"? I.e. I (SQLite) will have to search every label table on the existence of the item...? As this seems a typical newbie question ... I hope you'll be kind to me ;-)