Обсуждение: Large table or many small tables?

Assuming that the data is exactly the same, I'm wondering if it is
better to store it in a single large table or many smaller tables.
Right now I have upwards of 2000 tables, some containing upwards of
10,000 records, and each record contains a large amount of text stored
in a varchar field.


Problem Domain (for anyone that's interested):
--------------------------------
I receive data transfers from people; a table is created for each data
transfer.  Each data transfer has multiple text files.  The files are
parsed into pages, and each page is stored in the table just created.
The number of transfers (and thereby the number of tables) is increasing
daily.

Thanks for any input.




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Joel Mc Graw
DataBill, LLC
602-415-1234 ext. 13

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Joel Mc Graw <jmcgraw@databill.com> writes:
> Assuming that the data is exactly the same, I'm wondering if it is
> better to store it in a single large table or many smaller tables.
> Right now I have upwards of 2000 tables, some containing upwards of
> 10,000 records, and each record contains a large amount of text stored
> in a varchar field.

10K records is in the range of "too small to notice".  On the other
hand, 2000 tables is probably more files than you want to be holding
open at once, on most Unixen.  You would be much better off with one
table having 20M records, I should think.

            regards, tom lane