How to design database tables for a Factory class?

Question

How can I design database table structure for a class that varies in its core parameters, when it is created by a factory method?

I have a Factory like this:

class ProductFactory
{
    public function giveMeProduct()
    {
        switch ($this->productLine) {
            case "A": return new AProduct();
            case "B": return new BProduct();
            case "C": return new CProduct();
            case "D": return new DProduct();
            case "E": return new EProduct();
            case "F": return new FOptions();

            default: return new Product();
        }
    }
}

$product = (new ProductFactory("A"))->giveMeProduct();

Each product has different parameters. There are some shared, but not many.

So for example once created, each product contains the following variable options:

______stages___pipes___holder___orientation (flags)
| A  |   x   |        |       |            |
| B  |       |   x    |   x   |      x     |
| C  |       |        |       |      x     |
| D  |       |   x    |   x   |            |
| E  |       |   x    |       |            |
 etc

So I can either design several tables, one for each product, but I think doing so will be quite wasteful in resources (extra tables, files, connecting tables) for just a few parameters in a small little product options class. Or I can cobble all product options into a single table, which will be sparse, like one above. It will be wasteful but in other ways (table space), although seeing that I don't have many options it may be okay.

In a word, I have 6 classes, each with different options, most of which are not shared among classes.

How do I design a table for this class to persistently store and recover data? What patterns can I use?

Answer 1

I would solve this with three tables: products, features, and product_features.

Products
id     name       description  
1223   A          abcdefg
1224   B          hijklmnop
1225   C          qrstuvwxyz


features
id   name            description  
20   stages          such-and-such
21   pipes   
22   holder
23   orientation


product_features
PRIMARY KEY(product_id,feature_id)
CONSTRAINT FK_product_id FOREIGN KEY (product_id) REFERENCES products(id)
CONSTRAINT FK_feature_id FOREIGN KEY (feature_id) REFERENCES features(id)

product_id   feature_id
1223         20
1224         21         
1224         22 
1224         23