I have several fields in which I will be strong text. Various categories, and for each category, its related subcategories. Each subcategory then contains various items.
My question is, for performance, would it be better to assign each category/subcategory pair a unique ID number and then anytime I need to lookup something in a subcategory, look up the ID number and search off of that? Or, would it be about the same to just search the entire list of items on the text of the category subcategory? Ex: First way: Two tables: Categories - Category (text), Subcategory (text), CatID (unique integer) Items - CatID (integer relating to id in categories table), .... Other item info I would do something like: SELECT CatID FROM Categories WHERE Category="desired category" AND Subcategory="desired subcategory" Then for example to retrieve all items in that subcategory: SELECT * FROM Items WHERE CatID=(the id found in previous select) OR: One table: Items - Category (text), Subcategory (text), ... Other item info And to find all items in a subcategory, do: SELECT * FROM Items WHERE Category="desired category" AND Subcategory="desired subcategory" It seems to me the second way would be slower, because it has to do many more string tests. But does it make a difference? Is testing integer equality actually faster than string equality? Adam Clauss [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
