Database Speed

[anthill]

Hi,

Sorry if this is either blinding obvious or has been answered before, but around how many fields can be entered into an SQL database before it starts going slow?

Obviously this depends on how many people are accessing it at once and how much information there is in the database. Yet I am currently running my website off just one database, adding to it each few days, wonderring if I am slowing down the whole navigation of the site 🙁

Anyone able to gimme a few pointers as when to start using another database?

Also, when compared to ASP using MS access databases, is there a huge difference in the accessing speed if they both contain the same amount of information. I've heard that MS access databases aren't as stable as MySQL, which I can imagine is pretty believable!

Cheers 😉

Ant

[bastien]

on what kind of query is being run, are there joins in the query, what are the field types etc...

one trick is for table where the data doesn;t change much, like a products table, you can convert them to a text file and have the server read the text file as opposed to hitting the DB...also limit the amount of dynamic content to certain pages, etc

also consider indexing the table to make any searches quicker...

if you find that you are running multiple queries to get info out of several tables at once and you find that nested queries might be quicker, and since mysql does not support nested queries, then it might be time to switch to a db that supports nested queries (DB2, ORacle, Sql Server, PostgreSQL)...

access sucks, though i have seen sites where access can support 20k+ visitors a day....it all depends on code design, like not opening the db connection until you have to, and closing it immediately afterwards...

accessing a db is okay for web if the time taken is 100 millesecs. all dbs are supposed to support this limit...can't remember where i read that number but i know it was recent...

code design and site design are the two main determinants in how fast a site is and how smooth the flow is...

hth