Need some advice.... php & database coding

Anon

I'm using an e-mail system that provides folders & address book for each member who signed up. Btw, I'm using POP3 not IMAP so I have to emulate IMAP folders as db tables. I need some advice on which implementation is suitable.

each user has its addressbook table in the database.. named as username_addbook
same with (1) regarding folders

or
addressbook is in one table with username as its key
4 same with (3) regaring folders

Also, you if have some idea about emulating IMAP folders in MySQL database..pls i would appreciate if you give me some hint..
🙂

THANKS!!

juney

Anon

There are times when it's good to use one big table for things. This is especially true when the data may need to be cross referenced. If you have all your data in some unknown number of tables, it will be very hard to write an app that correlates any data in one table with another.

On the other hand, logically partitioning the data into seperate tables will likely provide some performance increase. It may or may not be a big increase, that depends on your database, OS, and other factors I'm sure I'm forgetting.

It is also less likely that one person will see the data from another's phonebook if you seperate the data by table.

Anon

How many users do you expect? If it's a large number, and if mysql still uses a one-physical-file-per-table design, you could incur some serious performance problems just due to huge directory sizes.

Anon

Well, lets say I expect about more than a thousand of people. All of them have folders & address book. My database will compose of the users (auth table), profile table, util_tables(for special purpose), folders (per user, will have one field which contains the E-mAIl source i need to still decode the source if the user would like to read that message), addressbook, prefereces(the user has the ability to change the color of their mailbox, also the font size).

Anon

Considering the number of expected users and the varying things you need to do, Kirk is right. Another very good reason to seperate the differing tables is to eliminate data duplication. Some pieces of data should only be entered once. User information is a perfect example of this. Check out some of the columns around the net on database normalization. A search on Google should net you a couple of good results. The below URL should get you started...

http://www.google.com/search?q=database+normalization&btnG=Google+Search

Later on,
Terrence

Anon

But, is there a possibility that if I have more users than expected. MySQL server might limit me in creating new tables...