Home Forums SQL Server 2005 T-SQL (SS2K5) Database Design question regarding Normalized Tables RE: Database Design question regarding Normalized Tables

  • kramaswamy (2/2/2013)

    The only reason I'm considering splitting the table into smaller pieces is the question of whether having a table with a large amount of columns would cause any degree of performance degradation.

    Depending what you're putting into those columns you might possibly run into issues with the maximum 8000-odd byte length a SQL row can be (ignoring out-of-row data like VARCHAR(MAX) etc). There's also the simple issue of readability--when you come back to this table in six months and have forgotten what columns are in it, how easy is it going to be to scan through those 30+ columns to find the information you're looking for?

    (I know what I speak of, on both counts--I'm often forced to delve around in a database that has a table containing in excess of 200 columns and with a maximum theoretical row length of more than 20k, which causes all sorts of fun!).