Hi,
1. Fixed length columns are considerably faster then variable length columns, and besides disk space is cheap.
2. Really depends on the scenerio. Mysql uses files to store your data, so you are usally bound to the o/s file size limit (which on Linux is 2 GB). This means a single table can't be bigger then the max file size. In most cases this doesn't matter.
3. The size represents the length of the field. Mysql and many other servers can't search on fields > 255 chars, or you need to switch to BLOB/TEXT type fields.
4. It depends on what sort of performance you are looking for? If you wanted to search, it would be easier/quicker to search over the entire table then to search over each smaller table individually.
5. Category Question - This doesn't work as nicely with the admin interface as the single table model does. It would make it more difficult to add in new fields to the Category table.
Cheers,
Alex
1. Fixed length columns are considerably faster then variable length columns, and besides disk space is cheap.
2. Really depends on the scenerio. Mysql uses files to store your data, so you are usally bound to the o/s file size limit (which on Linux is 2 GB). This means a single table can't be bigger then the max file size. In most cases this doesn't matter.
3. The size represents the length of the field. Mysql and many other servers can't search on fields > 255 chars, or you need to switch to BLOB/TEXT type fields.
4. It depends on what sort of performance you are looking for? If you wanted to search, it would be easier/quicker to search over the entire table then to search over each smaller table individually.
5. Category Question - This doesn't work as nicely with the admin interface as the single table model does. It would make it more difficult to add in new fields to the Category table.
Cheers,
Alex
