Preventing Duplicate Entries

[Axel IS Main]

I have a php app that updates an ever growing table with new information 
on a regular basis. Very often the information is duplicated. I'm 
currently handling this by checking the table for duplicate values every 
time I go to add new data. As you can imagine, as the table grows it 
takes longer and longer for this to happen, and the process gets slower 
and slower. In order to speed things up I'm wondering of it might not be 
a good idea to not allow duplication in a given field. The question is, 
if there is a duplicate, how will MySQL react? And what's the best way 
to manage that reaction? Also, will this actually be faster than doing 
it the way I'm doing it now?

Nick



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