Question

I develop software that stores a lot of data in one of its database tables (SQL Server version 8, 9 or 10). About 100,000 records are inserted into that table per day. This is about 36 million records per year. For performance, I create a new table every day (a table with the current date in its name) to lower the number of records per table.

Was this a good idea? Is there a record limit for SQL server tables? Or do you know how many records (more or less) can be stored in a table before performance is lowered significantly?

Answer 1

It’s hard to give a generic answer to this. It really depends on number of factors:

• what size your row is
• what kind of data you store (strings, blobs, numbers)
• what do you do with your data (just keep it as archive, query it regularly)
• do you have indexes on your table – how many
• what’s your server specs

etc.

As answered elsewhere here, 100,000 a day and thus per table is overkill – I’d suggest monthly or weekly perhaps even quarterly. The more tables you have the bigger maintenance/query nightmare it will become.