Question

I am wondering at which point would my MySQL table be considered too big.

The table is this:

• id
• customer_id (int)
• value (float)
• timestamp_1 (datetime)
• tmestampt_2 (datetime)

so the row size is not too great, but would be constantly being added. In my estimation I am looking at around 17000 new rows a day, so about 500,000 a month. The data is likely to be polled quite constantly in large quantities.

Should I be looking at ways to split this or am I still OK at this point?

Thanks,

Answer 1

From http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/full-table.html:

The effective maximum table size for MySQL databases is usually determined by operating system constraints on file sizes, not by MySQL internal limits.

From the table in the linked article, on FAT/FAT32 systems and Linux pre 2.4, the maximum file size is 2-4 GB, on all other systems listed, the max file size is at least 2TB.

So long as you index your table correctly, there shouldn’t be too much slowdown as your table grows. However, if your table grows to the extent that you do notice any slowdown, it might be an option for you to archive off old records periodically.