Re: schema design question

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 08:26:58PM +0200, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 11:12:16AM -0700, David Fetter wrote:
> > There's your mistake.  EAV is not performant, and won't become so.
>
> It sort of depends. I put all the EXIF information for my image
> gallery into an EAV table -- it was the most logical format at the
> time, although I'm not sure I need all the information. Anyhow, with
> clustering and indexes, Postgres zips through the five million
> records easily enough for my use -- at least fast enough that I can
> live with it without feeling the need for a redesign.

Unless your records are huge, that's a tiny database, where tiny is
defined to mean that the whole thing fits in main memory with plenty
of room to spare.  I guarantee that performance will crash right
through the floor as soon as any table no longer fits in main memory.

> As a general database design paradigm, though, I fully agree with
> you.  Databases are databases, not glorified OO data stores or hash
> tables.

Exactly :)

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
phone: +1 415 235 3778        AIM: dfetter666
                              Skype: davidfetter

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