Is there a speed difference?

[astralaaron]

If there is a table that has 10 fields, and you wanted to select only 2 of the fields, is it slower than if the table only had 2 fields and using a select *?

 

I am wondering if I should have my members table have more fields or to create a separate table for their account profile information

[niche]

Searches are mostly about focus and the amount of data that has to be sifted. Target only the data that has the info you need in tables that don't contain a bunch of irrelevant data or data that requires a lot of calculation and your queries will usually be as fast as you can make them

[astralaaron]

Searches are mostly about focus and the amount of data that has to be sifted. Target only the data that has the info you need in tables that don't contain a bunch of irrelevant data or data that requires a lot of calculation and your queries will usually be as fast as you can make them

 

Sorry, I have a difficult time wrapping my head around things some times.. When you say "tables that don't contain a bunch of irrelevant data" that means that the table with only the two fields would be faster than targeting the table that has 10 fields? The 8 additional fields are irrelevant to this specific search..

 

 

Thank you for responding.

[davej]

I doubt that the width of the table would have much effect as long as you aren't indexing these columns or pulling in a large amount of data. Obviously it is slower to handle more data vs. less data. Why don't you simply benchmark a pair of test cases?

[justsomeguy]

Indexes also play a role. If all of the columns that you're selecting are indexed in the order in which you select them then that will also affect the time to get results.