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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T20:07:06+00:00

I was wondering where the cut off point is to creating a field in

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I was wondering where the cut off point is to creating a field in a database to hold your data or generating the data yourself in your code. For example, I need to know certain value that is generated from two different columns in the database. Column1-Column2 = Column3. So here is the question will it be better to generate that data in the code or should I create a Column3 and put the data there while populating the DB and then retrieve it later. In my case the data is a two digit integer or a single character string, basically small data.

I am using the latest mysql the programming language is php with the mysqli library. Also this website should not get too much traffic and the size of the db will be 200k rows at the most.

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  1. Editorial Team

    This type of attribute (column) is called derived attribute. You should not put them in database as they will increase redundancy. Just put column1 and column2 and calculate it while fetching. For example like this, 

    `Column1` - `Column2` as `Column3`

    If you dont bother query that way every time create a view with added derived attributes.

    Note, If calculating is cpu intensive you should consider using cache. and then you must implement how and when this cache will be invalidated.

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