One Very large DB or very many smaller ones?

bengiles

I have purchased a classified ad program which I am modifying to use as a business directory. The program will be set up to limit listings to the user's county. There are 3,200 plus counties in the US. There will be about 30 million records to start with. This makes me feel like I need to evaluate the pros and cons of using one database, or one database for each county. I haven't found any sources of information to help me make the assesment. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

laserlight

I think you should go with just one very large DB.

You might want to considering separating the tables in the DB instead, since in normalised form all the records would probably be kept on one table, with other tables storing information that would be repeated (e.g. countries, since each country has many different listings).

bengiles

Thanks for the response laserlight. I'm learning as much as I can right now about tables and their optimal structures. My tables will be normalised to the fourth form. You suggest one database, but not why you reached that conclusion. Each of the alternatives would surely have advantages and disadvantages compared to the other. These are the things I want to be able to assess and truly understand in order to make my decision. If you could point me to some online info that would help me understand these differences it would be very very much appreciated.