Re: DB Design of GMail: Multiple tables vs. one table?

From: Tony Andrews <andrewst_at_onetel.com>
Date: 4 Apr 2005 05:23:36 -0700
Message-ID: <1112617416.202881.321360@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>

joeserel_at_gmail.com wrote:
> So now you understand why I am so focused on that multiple table vs.
> signle table choice ... I just thought by looking at DB design of
web
> mail systems, I can make the right choice. I don't have a lot of
large
> scale DB experience: I don't know if it will be efficient to access a
> 10-million row table if we index on userId.

Yes, userId will be very selective so access via an index will be efficient.

The main issue with one big table is management - e.g. the downtime if an index needs to be re-created. Some large scale DBMSs (e.g. Oracle) support physical partitioning of a single logical table into many physical sub-tables. Received on Mon Apr 04 2005 - 07:23:36 CDT