ActiveRecord - Data Modeling

Hello!

I am coming from ASP.NET straight into Rails world and have read some books and watch many screencasts so I decided to start a project in Rails and this project is actually a Rails version of my ASP.NET site. Well, by default Rails uses single PK (althogh I saw some plugins that allow us creating composite PK with more than one attribute) so I decide to stick to the idea of PK Rails uses by default. (as of my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong). My entities are (some of them, just to start):

        Semester :semester         Disciplines :code, :description, :ratio         Classes :start_time, :end_time, :description, :teacher

The idea is:

    Semester has many Disciplines offered in that semester     Disciplines has many Classes

Since Disciplines are like a catalog of available disciplines to be offered in one very semester, I didn't want to repeat disciplines for each semester with "semester has_many :disciplines" because it would cause the discipline code and descriptions (which is somewhat big name of it) to be repeated to every discipline and every semester in Disciplines Model like this:

In the Semester Model, :semester_id => 1, lets say its 2009.1 :semester_id => 2, lets say its 2009.2

In the Discipline Model: :id = > 1, :semester_id => 1, :code => "ADM1004", :description => "ADMINISTRATION FOR ENGENEERING", :ratio => 2 :id = > 2, :semester_id => 2, :code => "ADM1004", :description => "ADMINISTRATION FOR ENGENEERING", :ratio => 2

So the :code and :description is somewhat redundant and wasting space on the database and I came up with using a third model to join them like this:

#Semester.rb class Semester < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :discipline_semesters has_many :disciplines, :through => :discipline_semesters end

#Discipline.rb class Discipline < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :discipline_semesters has_many :classes, :through => :discipline_semesters end

#Class.rb class Class< ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :discipline_semesters end

#DisciplineSemester.rb class DisciplineSemester< ActiveRecord::Base has_many :classes belongs_to :semester belongs_to :discipline end

Bad thing is somewhat wierd to create new classes for a DisciplineSemester because it would be something like:

Semester.create!(:semester=> 20091) - new semester semester = Semester.find(1) - Get it into a variable semester.disciplines << Discipline.create!(:code=> "ADM1004", :description=> "ADMINISTRACAO PARA ENGENHARIA", :ratio=> 4) - Creates and associates a class with the Semester discipline = p.disciplines.find_by_code("ADM1004") - Get the discipline variable discipline.classes- returns an empty array, none yet discipline.classes << Class.create!(:code => '33A', :start_time => '13h', :end_time => '15h', :description => 'Especial Class For Nerds') - tries to create an new classe for that disciplina in a semester and get:

ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughCantAssociateThroughHasManyReflection: Cannot modify association 'Disciplina#turmas' because the source reflection class 'Turma' is associated to 'DisciplinaPeriodo' via :has_many.

So to create a Class for a DisciplineSemester entries which represents an Discipline offered in a Semester, I must do something like:

   Class.create!(:code => '33A', :start_time => '13h', :end_time => '15h', :description => 'Especial Class For Nerds', :discipline_semester_id => PassHereTheID)

Sorry for the big message but I hope I made myself clear,

Thanks,