One table or two tables with a join?

One table or two tables with a join?

I have 117 columns in a table, with a total column length of 1290. All of my queries against this table (4) work extremely fast because there are no joins.

However, 69 of the fields are tinyint fields that are only used (in the where clause) by one of the queries about 25% of the time.

Question: Should I move the 69 fields to another table and do a query with a join (just for that query)... or since it is only 69 tinyint, does it really make a difference? Having it in one table is easier.

I'm just afraid of the total length of the columns (1290) and total fields (117) in this table and how it might get slow later if everything is in one table... and I could move the 69 to another table.

Design decisions like this drive me crazy, because I consider myself a 'programmer' not a designer.


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You'll be fine as long as you don't have more than a few million rows.

If any of your queries search on a column, i.e. use a column in a WHERE clause, then you should consider an index on that column.

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This was first published in September 2003

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