[x]
Posted via EE Mobile

Search, ask, and monitor your questions on the go with EE Mobile. Visit Experts Exchange from your mobile device and never be out of touch again.

07/26/2007 at 06:50AM PDT, ID: 22722716
[x]
Attachment Details
[x]
The Solution Rating System

With so many solutions, how can you tell which solutions are most likely to help you and which ones are not? To provide you with a tool to use, we rate our solutions based on various elements that most accurately determine if a solution is a quality solution. To explain what factors affect the solution rating, here are the elements we take into consideration when formulating our solution rating.

  • The Grade of the Solution
  • The Zone Rank of the Expert Providing the Solution
  • The Number of Author and Expert Comments
  • The Number of Experts Contributing
  • The Feedback of the Community

Your Input Matters
Because of the way the system is set up, the most important variable in this equation is you. As a member of Experts Exchange, you are able to cast your vote on the quality of the solutions in regard to how complete, accurate, helpful and easy to understand each solution is. When you provide your feedback, each rating is adjusted accordingly. So, if you see a solution that has a poor rating that you think is a good solution, let us know by rating it. As you do, the rating will be adjusted and will become more accurate for other members of our site.

If you have any suggestions that you would like to make for our rating system, please ask a question in the Suggestions Zone of Community Support.

Thank you!

7.8

One massive table or many small tables?

Asked by glcummins in MySQL Server, Databases Miscellaneous

Tags: tables, small, many, massive

I am rewriting a product-comparison site for a client, and would like assistance in determining a table structure for the database.

The site receives product feeds from 400+ vendors. These feeds are massaged into a standard format, and then made available for searching on the front-end. We currently use Sphinx (http://www.sphinxsearch.com) to create high-performance searchable indexes, so the eventual table structure need not be encumbered by search considerations.

My question is whether to place all of the products into one very large table, or to create several vendor-specific tables. We will use 10 to 15 million records, which represents 20 to 25 gigabytes of data.

Since the data is being indexed externally, my only question is regarding access time. The tradoff seems to be:

 A) Use a single large table, which allows multi-record queries, with the potential slowdown in overall retrieval time, or

 B) Use many smaller tables with relatively quick retrieval times, but requires the use of several queries to retrieve the data.

Does anyone have experience with this volume of data, and can you provide suggestions and/or testing schemes to determine which method would be more appropriate?
[+][-]07/26/07 06:59 AM, ID: 19574477

At Experts Exchange, members can ask their questions to thousands of technology professionals, also known as Experts. Experts compete and collaborate to answer those questions by leaving comments like this one.

Start your 30-day free trial to view this Expert Comment or ask the Experts your question.

 
[+][-]07/26/07 07:31 AM, ID: 19574779

View this solution now by starting your 30-day free trial. Setting up your free trial is quick, easy, and secure. We will return you to this solution, unlocked, when you're done.

 

About this solution

Zones: MySQL Server, Databases Miscellaneous
Tags: tables, small, many, massive
Sign Up Now!
Solution Provided By: Kdo
Participating Experts: 2
Solution Grade: A
 
 
[+][-]07/26/07 07:46 AM, ID: 19574942

Often, when Experts are collaborating with members who have asked questions, they will request additional information about the problem. Askers respond with an author comment like this one.

Start your 30-day free trial to view this Author Comment or ask the Experts your question.

 
[+][-]07/26/07 08:03 AM, ID: 19575114

At Experts Exchange, members can ask their questions to thousands of technology professionals, also known as Experts. Experts compete and collaborate to answer those questions by leaving comments like this one.

Start your 30-day free trial to view this Expert Comment or ask the Experts your question.

 
[+][-]07/26/07 08:17 AM, ID: 19575243

Often, when Experts are collaborating with members who have asked questions, they will request additional information about the problem. Askers respond with an author comment like this one.

Start your 30-day free trial to view this Author Comment or ask the Experts your question.

 
 
Loading Advertisement...
20090824-EE-VQP-74