Question

I have a classifieds website, and I am thinking about redesigning the database a bit.

Currently I have 7 tables in the db. One table for each “MAIN CATEGORY“.
For example, I have a “VEHICLES” table which holds all information about the following categories of classifieds:

   cars
   mc
   mopeds/scooters
   trucks
   boats
   etc etc

However, users on the website usually search in specific categories. For example, the user chooses the “cars” category to search in, and enters a keyword.

My code today, will search the entire VEHICLES table for all records with the field “category” equal to “cars”, and then get their details:

 "SELECT * IN vehicles WHERE category='cars' AND alot of other conditions" // just for example, not tested

I am thinking about making a table now, for each of these “sub-categories”.
Ie, one for cars, one for mc, one for trucks etc, so that search isn’t done through information which isn’t needed.

Will this increase search speed? Because I have calculated that I will need atleast 30 or so tables for this.

Thanks

Answer 1

With a properly indexed table and a “reasonable” number of rows, you will not gain much speed from this approach. Anything you gain in speed of execution you will lose in time-to-market because your programming will become more complicated.

Do not perform this optimization unless and until you encounter a performance problem in testing with a representative set of data.