Posted by Colin McKinnon on 12/07/32 11:50

Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> Kyle Teague wrote:
>> What would give better performance, serializing a multidimensional array
>> and storing it in a single entry in a table or storing each element of
>> the array in a separate table and associating the entries with the entry
>> in the other table?
>>
>
> That depends. Is the multidimensional array a single entity - or is it a
> collection of entities?
>
> Do some research on "database normalization". It's almost never a good
> idea to store multiple entities in a single field in a RDB.
>
> BTW you can still do it with one query by joining tables.
>
> One other thing - this isn't a PHP question - you should be asking in a
> group related to your database, such as comp.databases.mysql.
>

I don't think its OT. It really depends how big the array is and whether you
need all of it in memory every time you access it. If you only need a
specific element, I was surprised to find that even for quite small sets of
values the database was faster.

Build a test rig and try it out for yourself.

HTH

C.

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