One large table or 3 smaller tables for speed? 1

[Dfly]

My purpose is to get the catalog pages to load faster for our bookshop.

Currently I have all the data columns for the inventory in one table. Should I split off some of the columns into their own table? Then, use the item_id# as a common factor in each table and create join queries?

Ashford

http://www.magicbookshop.com

 

[sleipnir214]

You're talking about normalizing your database. It's a very good idea, but only if you reorganize your data correctly. Otherwise, you could very easily hurt performance.

For a bookstore, I'd have a table for editions, which stores title, number of pages, binding, isbn, a publisher id, and an author id.

The author table would hold the author's name and any other biographical information. It would relate to an edition through the author id in the editions table.

The publisher's table would have a publisher name, possibly an address. It would relate to an addition through the publisher id.

I'd might also have an inventory table, which would record how many of each edition I had on-hand in the store and a shelf location in the store. Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!