Database Design – Uses of Self-Referencing Tables

I would say, example-B

If you are using example A, then it is meaningless to save raw data in database; you can use plain text!

Example B supports searching for Doses, items related to Fever etc. (In example A you need to parse data).

Reducing the number of tables in a database is not an optimal solution. You have to normalize your data in order to select records based on a heavily conditioned search query (like, get all drugs for adults etc.)

I'm going to share some terminology with you that may help in your research.

The relationship you pictured is what is called a "ternary" relationship. It involves three entities. The simple relationships we usually deal with involve only two entities, and could be called "binary". There are "quaternary" relatinships, and so on. The general term is "n-ary".

You may also want to look up the following: Star schema, Ralph Kimball, Data warehousing, and multidimensional data model. A star schema is basically the intersection of relational tables and multidimensional modeling. There's too much here for me to do the subject justice. Happy hunting!