Re: Thousands of tables versus on table?

On 6/6/07, Craig James <craig_james(at)emolecules(dot)com> wrote:
> You didn't read my message. I said that *BOTH* Oracle
> and Postgres performed well with table-per-customer.

Yes, I did. My belief is that Oracle can handle all customers in a
single table.

> The technical question is simple: Table-per-customer or
> big-table-for-everyone. The answer is, "it depends."

I agree, it does depend on the data, workload, etc. No
one-size-fits-all answer there.

> The reason I assert (and stand by this) that "They're
> blowing smoke" when they claim Oracle has the magic
> cure, is because Oracle and Postgres are both relational
> databases, they write their data to disks, and they both
> have indexes with O(log(N)) retrieval/update times. Oracle
> doesn't have a magical workaround to these facts,
> nor does Postgres.

Agreed that they are similar on the basics, but they do use
significantly different algorithms and optimizations. Likewise, there
is more tuning that can be done with Oracle given the amount of time
and money one has to spend on it. Again, cost/benefit analysis on
this type of an issue... but you're right, there is no "magic cure".

--
Jonah H. Harris, Software Architect | phone: 732.331.1324
EnterpriseDB Corporation | fax: 732.331.1301
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