[wp-hackers] Rebuttal (re: Meta tables: Take 5)

[Mike Schinkel]

I also agree with Jacob that the performance concern is way overrated.

OTOH, I'm very weary of debating things on this list only to never see  
a consensus nor any results so I'd just really be happy to see  
*something* done related to meta, because I need it.

-Mike Schinkel
WordPress Custom Plugins
http://mikeschinkel.com/custom-wordpress-plugins/




On Jul 24, 2009, at 11:38 AM, Jacob Santos wrote:

> Scribu,
>
> I understand your argument that having a single table for meta is an  
> entirely bad idea based on the following assumptions.
>
> 1. Having hundreds of millions of rows is a performance problem for  
> searching, insertion, etc.
> 2. Having multiple blogs using the same table is a bad idea because  
> the size of the single table increases exponentially.
> 3. It quite frankly just plain sucks and is "bad design."
>
> Let me refute these claims, and if you have any further ones, then  
> let me know as I don't want to put up a straw man. These are just  
> the ones that I've heard in the past as to why single table  
> solutions are terrible. You might have others.
>
> 1. With proper indexes, performance problems shouldn't be an issue.  
> Having millions of rows in majority of cases shouldn't hinder most  
> of the use cases with the correct indexes to search on.
> 2. I would probably state that having multiple meta tables for each  
> blog would be a good idea as it doesn't have to be tied to just all  
> of the blogs for a single table but for a single blog for MU  
> installations.
> 3. It is in my opinion that having multiple tables with the same  
> structure and tiny amount of rows is even worse design than a single  
> table. Alas, a compromise can probably be found between a single  
> table and multiple tables.
>
> I will contend that for the majority of non-MU and plain WordPress  
> installations, having a single meta meta table will never even get  
> close to reaching 100,000 rows, let alone the millions that would be  
> required to degrade performance.
>
> I was actually going to flame you based on my (now correct)  
> assumption that it would be creating new tables. I think that it  
> would be against my doing so, or at least not publicly (the flame  
> email should be arriving to your email soon).
>
> Jacob Santos
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