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From: joeserel@gmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: DB Design of GMail: Multiple tables vs. one table?
Date: 3 Apr 2005 22:14:03 -0700
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Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.theory:30407

I see your point.

I am indeed doing my homework right now. I am considering to build a
message swap system (a web app) so that my 2000 users will be able to
exchange messages with each other (actually NO email involved - the
only way they can send/read messages is through our web app. No open
protocol.). So, for me, it is simple: I am just building a web app
pretty much like a web mail system so my users can log in and send/read
messages to each other.

My problems are (1) I need to convert historic data to the new system.
The historical data are like 2000+ messages for each user.(2) The users
will use the system frequently so the scalability requirement is to be
able to efficiently access the mail box for 5000 messages/user.

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.