> I know the boat has probably sailed by now on this thread, but as far as I > saw nobody has thrown in what I was going to say. > > A simple blanket statement like "Design for understanding, logic and > maintenance, not performance." is a little too glossy. > > You can't put all database usage into the one basket like that. Some > applications rely on a database purely as a backend, thus, a convoluted but > extremely high performance design may be favoured over a logical but average > performance one. Some applications will rely on logic and user understanding > to ensure that data is preserved and stored correctly, therefore a more > logical layout will be favoured over a confusing one that may perform > somewhat better. In the end it's up to the database designer to make the > right decision as to what's most appropriate for the application. > > "If you need more performance, throw more hardware at it" > > You will find that in many situations throwing more hardware is _still_ not > going to help. Optimizing your queries, application, tuning your server and > database design is where it's going to count most. With optimizations in > these areas only you can cut a query that took many hours previously down to > sub second, adding more hardware in this situation is still going to leave > you with an undesirably high execution time.
Of course, "more hardware" is after optimizing queries, indices, cache etc :-) > While I understand where you're going with your comments, I think it's > important to make sure people know these things. Sure is. Of course, I also had performance problems once (with an Oracle application) and we had to resort to different ways of doing things, by I always/still stand by my statement that you should not design for performance, but logically and for maintenance and understanding etc... With regards, Martijn Tonies Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL Server. Upscene Productions http://www.upscene.com -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
