Tables vs. DB's

[Nick (Goodbye!)]

So I am creating an online software that will allow users to sign up for their own forum, and I was wondering if I should do Tables or Databases.

What I mean, is should I have one giant database with tables that start with the prefix of the forum?

Or should I have individual databases for each forum?

I am looking for what you have had a good experience on doing. Factors that I am looking at is mainly speed.

Thank you guys for your help.

[Charles Stover]

Neither. Perhaps read a rather in-depth tutorial on database optimization before tackling such a SQL-intensive project.

[Michael]

For a forum, you need a mixture of tables per forum, and tables per item. But as Charles said, read some tutorials.

[Charles Stover]

I don't think you would need to give each forum its own tables ever. That defeats the purpose of indexes. Multiple databases would make sense to prevent overloading one, but definitely not one forum per database. Maybe like a thousand per database, or until lagging starts.

[Nick (Goodbye!)]

May 9, 2010 9:51:56 GMT -8 Charles Stover said:

I don't think you would need to give each forum its own tables ever. That defeats the purpose of indexes. Multiple databases would make sense to prevent overloading one, but definitely not one forum per database. Maybe like a thousand per database, or until lagging starts.

That's a good Idea. I'd probably have at least 1 db per server.

[infestor1]

What I personally use is a couple of tables per forum.

Like if you sign up with forum "soccer", then these would be the tables:

soccer_boards
soccer_users
soccer_posts
soccer_pm
soccer_settings

I use that because any project that I start would get at max like 100 forums... If you were going for a larger scale forum hosting service like Proboards or other services, then you might want to take advice from someone else.