[Tagdb] Tags and data storage

[Nitin Borwankar]

Short answer - you trade space for time. So trying to save space by not 
having a tags table will cause your queries to get slower as your app 
grows larger.  You'l be spendingmore and more time trying to manage the 
list-of-tags mini-database, inside your real database.

Experience with a few apps shows that the performance hit of  these 
issues doesn't surface until you hit 20k-40K users and then it hit's you 
hard just when your user base is beginning to grow fast and furiously. 

Nitin Borwankar

Joshua Lippiner wrote:

> General questions about storing of tags -
>  
> I am working on a movie cataloging and swapping application that 
> allows users to tag the various films.  I have been going back and 
> forth regarding the storage of the tags in the database.  Del.icio.us 
> only allows the user to enter single words separated by spaces and (I 
> would imagine) stores each tag in a separate dB row.  Other sites 
> allow for phrases and separate them by commas but again, store each 
> tag in a separate row.
>  
> I can understand from an ease of search POV why you would do this, but 
> if your table is denormalized, like mine, I am afraid the table size 
> will grow very very large very quickly. 
>  
> Does anyone have any recommendations/thoughts on tag storage?  Are you 
> better off storing an entire list of tags associated with one item 
> into a single field and then dealing with searching issues later or, 
> in the end, do the benefits outweight the size issue by storing each 
> tag as a new dB row?
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Josh
>
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