I agree that recursive queries overcomplicate things greatly. Store the whole thing as a semi-typed JSON document, consider adding a thin caching layer to avoid

I agree that recursive queries overcomplicate things greatly. Store the whole thing as a semi-typed JSON document, consider adding a thin caching layer to avoid re-parsing it on every hit (perhaps with some kind of sticky load balancing if you are running multiple processes -- I don't know how the app setup he uses work). Plus, depending on who your users, the amount of options you'll want your questions/answers to have will steadily increase, making it more suitable to a semi-typed JSON tree (I say that based on a decade's commercial experience in this field -- and at the very beginning I was doing it via Perl CGI scripts). Plus, if you really really wanted, with PG 9.3+ you an actually do queries within the JSON. One tip: make sure everything has a system-generated unique ID.