Question

For a RoR app I’m helping develop, I need to save all search queries in a database so I can analyze them later.

My plan right now is to create a Result model and table, and just save each search query’s text in that table, along with a user’s ID, the time, etc.

However, the app has about 15,000 users, so I’m afraid the single table approach won’t be super efficient when it comes time to parse that data. (The database is setup via MySQL, if that factors in at all.)

Am I just being paranoid? Is there a Ruby gem that handles this sort of thing, or a better approach I could take?

Any input would be appreciated.

Answer 1

there are couple of approaches you can try:
1. Enable mysql query logging and than analyze these logs
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/query-log.html
2. Use key=>value store (redis comes to mind) to log the search query in a similar way you described

If you decide to go with the 2nd approach i would create an asynch observer on the model you want to track