Mysql – Should I use one-to-many or many-to-many to log previous records

You want three tables for this:

• Users with a row per user and whatever details you need
• Groups with a row per group and whatever details you need
• UsersGroups with a unique combination of UserId, GroupId that only keeps track of relationships

This will let you have as many combinations as you like.

I might suggest to reorganize schema, to make it more scalable.

1. DROP columns entityId and entityType.
2. CREATE an Objects (or Entities) table which will store public / shared information for all objects / entities. It's primary key will migrate to Companies and to Houses with 1:1 relation. For one object might exist only one company OR only one house. Also, you will have to remove AUTO_INCREMENT from Companies and Houses, because in this case they will no longer generate identifiers themselves.
3. Add foreign key to Contacts table from shared Objects table - contacts might exist for any type of object.

Structure might look like this:

You might obtain entity type by following query:

SELECT
    cnt.*,
    CASE
        WHEN NOT cmp.id IS NULL THEN 1
        WHEN NOT hs.id IS NULL THEN 2
    END as entityType
FROM
    Contacts as cnt
        INNER JOIN Objects as obj ON cnt.objectId = obj.id
        LEFT JOIN Companies as cmp ON cmp.id = obj.id
        LEFT JOIN Houses as hs ON cmp.id = hs.id

Also, note that entityId becomes objectId in this case.

Here is a CREATE-script for benchmarking and test:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `Objects` (
  `id` BIGINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `shared_property1` VARCHAR(45) NULL,
  `shared_property2` VARCHAR(45) NULL,
  `etc` VARCHAR(45) NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY (`id`))
ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `Companies` (
  `id` BIGINT NOT NULL,
  `company_name` VARCHAR(300) NULL,
  `private_property1` VARCHAR(45) NULL,
  `private_property2` VARCHAR(45) NULL,
  `etc` VARCHAR(45) NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),

  CONSTRAINT `FK_Companies_Objects`
    FOREIGN KEY (`id`)
    REFERENCES `Objects` (`id`)
    ON DELETE CASCADE
    ON UPDATE CASCADE)
ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `Houses` (
  `id` BIGINT NOT NULL,
  `address` VARCHAR(300) NULL,
  `private_property1` VARCHAR(45) NULL,
  `private_property2` VARCHAR(45) NULL,
  `etc` VARCHAR(45) NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),

  CONSTRAINT `FK_Houses_Objects`
    FOREIGN KEY (`id`)
    REFERENCES `Objects` (`id`)
    ON DELETE CASCADE
    ON UPDATE CASCADE)
ENGINE = InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `Contacts` (
  `id` BIGINT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `objectId` BIGINT NOT NULL,
  `name` VARCHAR(300) NULL,
  `phone` VARCHAR(300) NULL,
  `email` VARCHAR(300) NULL,

  PRIMARY KEY (`id`),

  INDEX `FK_Contacts_Objects` (`objectId` ASC),

  CONSTRAINT `FK_Contacts_Objects`
    FOREIGN KEY (`objectId`)
    REFERENCES `Objects` (`id`)
    ON DELETE CASCADE
    ON UPDATE CASCADE)
ENGINE = InnoDB;