Sql query optimalization - php

Question

My ch_skills table looks like
uid | skill1 | skill2 | skill3 | skill4 | skill5
1 1 2 2 0 1
2 1 1 2 1 1
3 1 2 3 0 1
My first question: is this correct? I mean would it be better if I made it like this:
uid | skillid | skill_lvl
1 1 1
1 2 2
1 3 2
1 4 0
1 5 1
Everything worked fine until now with the example #1, but now I'm in a trouble with the sql queries. Currently, I'm using 5 different queries to get the level of each skill. I use the following code:
For skill1:
$query = $this->db->prepare("SELECT `skills`.`skill_ID` as `Skill1_id`,
`skill_name`.`skill_name` as `Skill1_name`, `skill_level` as `Skill1_level`,
`skill_price` as `Skill1_price`
FROM `skills`, `skill_name`, `ch_skills`
WHERE `skill_name`.`skill_ID` = `skills`.`skill_ID`
AND `skills`.`skill_ID`= 1
AND `skills`.`skill_level` = `ch_skills`.`skill1`
AND `ch_skills`.`uid` = :uid");
For skill2:
$query = $this->db->prepare("SELECT `skills`.`skill_ID` as `Skill1_id`,
`skill_name`.`skill_name` as `Skill1_name`, `skill_level` as `Skill1_level`,
`skill_price` as `Skill1_price`
FROM `skills`, `skill_name`, `ch_skills`
WHERE `skill_name`.`skill_ID` = `skills`.`skill_ID`
AND `skills`.`skill_ID`= 2
AND `skills`.`skill_level` = `ch_skills`.`skill2`
AND `ch_skills`.`uid` = :uid");
And so on... As you can see, there's only two differences: skill_id = 2, and skill2 as the coulmn's name. Is there any way for querying all the 5 skills in only 1 query? Or would you recommend me anyway to change the table structure?
Note: skills stands for the skill prices, and skill_name for the skill's names.

Answer 1

As the other commenters have suggested, your best choice is to change the table exactly as you proposed.
The biggest reason not to have a wide table like you show in your first example, is that adding a skill means changing the structure of the database, which could break existing queries.
Secondly, as you see when you're trying to query the results, having a single table doesn't even make it easier to work with.
The only possible benefit to a non-normalized table like your example is that it takes up slightly less disk space. But in todays world, disk space should never be your primary concern.
To answer your question about querying the original non-normalized example, however, there are two ways to do it:
Use a union statement which would combine 5 distinct queries together. This is pretty inefficient
Create a table with (in this case) 5 rows (or if you have a Skills table use that). Then join the ch_skills table to that, which should take each row and split it 5 times. See below: (note: I'm assuming for the purposes of this example that skills and skill_name are in a 1:1 relationship and only have 5 records each)
SELECT skills.skill_ID,
skill_name.skill_name,
skill_level as Skill_level,
skill_price as Skill_price
FROM skills
JOIN skill_name on skill_name.skill_ID = skills.skill_ID
JOIN ch_skills
WHERE ch_skills.uid = :uid
AND ((skills.skill_ID = 1 AND skills.skill_level = ch_skills.skill1)
OR (skills.skill_ID = 2 AND skills.skill_level = ch_skills.skill2)
OR (skills.skill_ID = 3 AND skills.skill_level = ch_skills.skill3)
OR (skills.skill_ID = 4 AND skills.skill_level = ch_skills.skill4)
OR (skills.skill_ID = 5 AND skills.skill_level = ch_skills.skill5))