Hi: Let's say I want to store the following information.
Unique ID - INT(10) autoincrement First Name - VARCHAR (25) Last Name - VARCHAR (25) Age - INT(3) Date - DATETIME Activity - VARCHAR(100) Data - TEXT I would be basing my queries on all columns _except_ the Data column. I.e. I would be using WHERE's with all except the Data column. My question is...which design would perform better? (Design A) Put all in one table...index all the columns that I will use WHERE with. -TABLE_ALL- Unique ID - INT(10) autoincrement First Name - VARCHAR (25) Last Name - VARCHAR (25) Age - INT(3) Date - DATETIME Activity - VARCHAR(100) Data - TEXT Indices - Unique ID, First Name, Last Name, Age, Date, Activity SELECT First_Name, Last_Name, Data FROM TABLE_ALL WHERE Activity = 'draw' AND Age > 24; (Design B) Put the Data in its own separate table. -TABLE_A- Unique ID - INT(10) autoincrement First Name - VARCHAR (25) Last Name - VARCHAR (25) Age - INT(3) Date - DATETIME Activity - VARCHAR(100) Data_ID - INT(10) Indices - Unique ID, First Name, Last Name, Age, Date, Activity -TABLE_B- Data_ID - INT(10) Data - TEXT Index - Data_ID SELECT TABLE_A.First_Name, TABLE_A.Last_Name, TABLE_B.Data FROM TABLE_A, TABLE_B WHERE Activity = 'draw' AND Age > 24 AND TABLE_A.Data_ID = TABLE_B.Data_ID; (Aside: Would this query give me the same results as the above query?) -James
