Question

I have a database (running on postgres, precisely) , with the following structure :

user1 (schema)
|
 - cars (table)
 - airplanes (table, again)
 ...
user2
|
 - cars
 - airplanes
 ...

It’s clearly not structurized the way classic relational databes should be, but it “just works” as it is now. As you can see, schemas are like primary keys used to identify entries.

In terms of performance -and nothing else-, is it worth rebuilding it so it’ll have traditional primary keys (varchar being their type) & clustered indexes instead of schemas ?

Answer 1

From a Performance Perspective, actually from any perspective surely this is a NIGHTMARE, REBUILD!

Without knowing any more about your situation, I guess the answer would be YES, this would effect performance. Ordinarilly simple queries would not only be much more complicated to write and maintain but the db would produce query plans that were significantly more costly to execute.

Edit: I’ve worked with, and designed, DB’s to handle a lot of data in high workload environments (banking and medical) and I have never seen anything like it; well not in the modern world!