Обсуждение: When do you separate databases?

Hi All,

I am managing a database design project.

It will database our entire website including:

images, articles, bibliography, ecommerce, membership in website, site
statistics, etc.

The 'lumper' team member says "let's make it all one giant database with
dozens and dozens of tables".

The 'splitter' team member says "let's make it many separate databases each
having fewer tables".

What are the advantages and disadvantages to 'lumping' all tables into one
database vs. 'splitting' into multiple databases with fewer tables?

Thanks,

Conrad

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* Conrad Schuler <conrad.schuler@masks.org> [010206 17:55] wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am managing a database design project.
>
> It will database our entire website including:
>
> images, articles, bibliography, ecommerce, membership in website, site
> statistics, etc.
>
> The 'lumper' team member says "let's make it all one giant database with
> dozens and dozens of tables".
>
> The 'splitter' team member says "let's make it many separate databases each
> having fewer tables".
>
> What are the advantages and disadvantages to 'lumping' all tables into one
> database vs. 'splitting' into multiple databases with fewer tables?

The 'splitter' is being pretty silly, Postgresql doesn't have
cross-database query capabilities therefore the second you have
to do a join involving data you initially thought no one would
ever associate with each other you're hosed.

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."

On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, Conrad Schuler wrote:

> I am managing a database design project.
>
> It will database our entire website including:
>
> images, articles, bibliography, ecommerce, membership in website, site
> statistics, etc.
>
> The 'lumper' team member says "let's make it all one giant database with
> dozens and dozens of tables".
>
> The 'splitter' team member says "let's make it many separate databases each
> having fewer tables".
>
> What are the advantages and disadvantages to 'lumping' all tables into one
> database vs. 'splitting' into multiple databases with fewer tables?

If the data is all inter-related, it should all go into one database or
schema.  In PostgreSQL, you can't access tables across multiple schemas
unless you use multiple database handles in an application written in a
language that can do multiple handles.  Unless you have a *very* good
reason to split the data across multiple schemas (like perhaps one schema
needs to be secured behind a firewall because it has very sensitive data,
but then you would be putting it on a separate machine anyway...), you
should keep all of your data in one schema.  It isn't going to impact
performance, and with PostgreSQL, it will require a lot of extra
programming to handle multiple databases anyway.

-- Brett
                                     http://www.chapelperilous.net/~bmccoy/
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