RE: Database Design Best Practice help

From: Mark W. Farnham <mwf_at_rsiz.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2013 04:45:59 -0500
Message-ID: <006001cdfd3c$47a4f330$d6eed990$_at_rsiz.com>

In addition to the logical reasons others have mentioned in the thread, there is a potentially overwhelming physical reason:

You cannot predict which queries might be needed in the future that might optimally be a full table scan of any one of the hundred tables; if toss all the data into a single table you will potentially read all the data instead of only the relevant data.

Think of it this way: You have boxes of needles of one hundred colors. You don't want to search for a needle in a stack of needles - it is even worse than searching for a needle in a haystack.

-----Original Message-----

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Jose Soares
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 4:03 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Database Design Best Practice help

Hi all,

I have a question about database design best pratice.

In my db I have about one hundred tables like this:

code
description

To avoid to have a so great number of similar tables in the db I wonder if it is a good idea to unify all these tables in one big table like this:

id
code
table_ name
description

The advantages are:

1. only one table in the db instead of 100 2. only one controller to manage the table

Could this be a way to enhance db performance? Is there any negative point that I don't see?

Thanks for any comments.

j

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http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l Received on Mon Jan 28 2013 - 10:45:59 CET