Question

I am designing a database for a project. I have a table that has 10 columns, most of them are used whenever the table is accessed, and I need to add 3 more columns;

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which will be used on %90 of the queries when the table is accessed. So, my question is that whether it is better to break the table up and create new table which will have these 3 columns + Foreign ID, or just make it 13 columns and use no joins?

Since these columns will be used frequently, I guess adding 3 more columns is better, but if I need to create 10 more columns which will be used %90 of the time, should I add them as well, or create a new table and use joins?

I am not sure when to break the table if the columns are used very frequently. Do you have any suggestions?

Answer 1

since it’s such a high number of usage cases (90%) and the fields are only numbers (not text) then i would certainly be inclined to just add the fields to the existing table.

edit: only break tables apart if the information is large and/or infrequently accessed. there’s no fixed rule, you might just have to run tests if you’re unsure as to the benefits.