* adam nelson > Management seems like the biggest reason for me. Just from a time spent > point of view, I would go with 16 tables instead of 1600. Not only > that, I wonder if there would be a big memory hit from having all those > objects open at once. Just seems to me that mysql was designed for big > tables, 1600 tables is really quite a few.
Yes, I would think the size of the tables is the most important issue... with small data amounts it probably is better to keep it in one db, if possible... but 1600 x 100M is probably better than 16 x 10G... and it would make a difference if you use innodb compared to myisam, and of course the 2GB and 4GB and any other OS limits may apply. There is also a security aspect: if the 100 customers are going to have access to the same database, they will also be able to see each others data. Maybe the 100 customers have telnet access to the server and are responsible for their own backups? That would be no problem if each had a separate database. There's no problem to make backup scripts extracting one customers data from one big db, but... it's easier not having to do that. :) Maybe the software using the database can be installed on the company intranet, along with a copy of the database? Maybe a fresh copy could be downloaded each morning. That would be real easy with myisam tables and separate databases, while it would reqire some export script and mysqld processing for the one db solution. Depending on the application using the 16 tables, maybe some tables could be shared? With mysql you can use multiple databases in a single select, simplifying this kind of shared tables: just make a db called "shared" or similar, put the shared tables in it, and refer to "shared.tablename" in the queries. This could reduce required disk space and improve overall performance. I'm sure there are more things to consider, these just came to mind. :) -- Roger --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
