Sign Up to our social questions and Answers Engine to ask questions, answer people’s questions, and connect with other people.
Login to our social questions & Answers Engine to ask questions answer people’s questions & connect with other people.
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
Right now on my (beta) site i have a table called user data which stores name, hash(password), ipaddr, sessionkey, email and message number. Now i would like the user to have a profile description, signature, location (optional) and maybe other things. Should i have this in a separate mysql table? or should i share the table? and why?
This is called vertical partitioning, and in general it will not make much difference whichever option you go for.
One vertical partitioning method is to split fields that are updated frequently from fields that are updated rarely. Imagine a
Userstable in Stack Overflow’s database, havingUser_ID,DisplayName,Location, etc… and thenUpVotes,DownVotes,LastSeen,NumberOfQuestionsAsked, etc. The first set of fields changes rarely (only on profile edits), while the latter set change frequently (on normal activity).Another splitting method could be between data that is accessed frequently, from data that is accessed rarely.
This kind of partitioning, in some particular situations, can yield better performance.