>>>>> "Matthias" == Matthias Pigulla <mp@stripped> writes:
Matthias> Hi folks,
Matthias> I'm trying to design a MySQL database to be accessible as performant as
Matthias> possible.
Matthias> Core of the system is a table to store plain texts, among other data
Matthias> consisting of a headline and a body. All data except the body can be
Matthias> arranged to have a fixed size.
Matthias> Now, I'm unsure wheter to put all the data into one table, causing
Matthias> variable length records, or wheter to have a separate table for the
Matthias> bodies and a "fixed record size" table for the other stuff?
Matthias> Whenever I want to retrieve a text, I would have to join both tables.
Matthias> The text pool will become fairly large, but SELECTS with text bodies
Matthias> will always get only one text via an unique ID.
Matthias> I then have a second type of selects, retrieving only headlines, ordered
Matthias> by a timestamp (ie the latest n headlines).
Matthias> Would my database - especially the second query type - benefit from
Matthias> fixed size records?
Hi!
It's very likely that using two tables is the best choise in this
case.
You can always try both methods; First design everything with 2
tables and after this create a 'total' table with
INSERT INTO total_table SELECT * from table1,table2 WHERE ...
Regards,
Monty
