Question

I have a general Database Design question: When is it better to create a new Database instead of adding new Tables to an existing? The question is related to design/maintainability andalso performance issues.

Background: we are mirroring the main tables of our customer by importing the data every night into our DB called RM2. Some new (ASP.Net-)Projects need access to this data too, now i’m wondering if i should create new databases for each project or merge their tables with the RM2(current size: 37991.94 MB).

Answer 1

I won’t necessarily answer your question, but I’ll give you a bunch of other questions to consider as well:

1. When should I add files to a filegroup in my database? – When files get too big, where “too big” may be a matter of opinion.
2. When should I add a new filegroup to my database? – When you want to be able to optimize disk usage for different database operations.
3. When should I add a new schema to my database? – When you have a set of objects that are logically related and may require different default permissions for users.
4. When should I add a new database to my application? – When you don’t need any referential integrity between any of the tables in the two databases. When you don’t want to allow any ownership-chained permissions to cross between two sets of objects. When you want to independently backup and restore. When you want different SQL Server recovery models for two sets of data.

I guess that may have answered your question some. 😉