At the moment I have just about a database per domain. However, this does of course mean that some merchants who have a wide category of products are on more than one database.
I am wondering now if it would be better to just have one database. But a couple of things concern me.
1) Would the site be slower accessing one huge database?
2) Just how big would the database get? I know, how long is a piece of string! But I have read on here some databases have well over 400 merchants. How big are these?
I am asking the second question as I have just changed hosts and, having discussed my current setup they advised me to come away from a vps and on to a reseller account. I will need to ask them if having just one big database would be too much a drain on whatever, but would of course need to go to them with some sort of figures.
Hi Jill,
I would never recommend anything over 100,000 on a normal shared hosting account - and for good performance a lot less in reality - depending on server capability (which can vary from provider to provider of course); and even on VPS or a dedicated server running such a large database requires a good understanding of MySQL configuration and optimisation etc. Some info and discussion in this thread from users running very large Price Tapestry databases:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/732
I would invest time in setting up the automation for multiple smaller databases to guarantee performance - once it's all set-up the ongoing administration shouldn't be significantly different.
Cheers,
David.