Fetching 12 columns or 1 TEXT field?

[Eamon Daly]

Which do you folks think is faster: randomly accessing a
table with a primary key and a dozen CHAR columns or a table
with a primary key and a single merged TEXT column? The data
in the 11 extra columns will always be fetched as a single
request.

I rolled my own benchmarking program and 10,000 runs each
came out just about equal, which surprised me a little.

____________________________________________________________
Eamon Daly