From: Dan Nelson
Date: June 23 2004 8:03pm
Subject: Re: Fetching 12 columns or 1 TEXT field?
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/167795
Message-Id: <20040623200344.GB3032@dan.emsphone.com>
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In the last episode (Jun 23), Eamon Daly said:
> 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.

Probably because each disk seek takes much longer to complete than the
difference between processing 1 and 12 fields.  Timing a sequential
walk through the table may show more of a difference.  You probably
won't see much difference in table size between the two, either, since
a VARCHAR requires length(field)+1 bytes of storage, and you would need
to put a delimiter between your fields in the TEXT column.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@stripped