On Oct 5, 11:30*am, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Just to be difficult.....

This is now a long thread, with numerous well-crafted arguments
exhaustively
defending good database design. But (largely for the sake of
argument)
there are times when bad design is called for.

For large, well-funded projects, performance can always
be purchased, usually for far less than the maintenance costs
associated with
bad design.

But smaller, not-so-well funded systems are part of the bell curve
too.
I wrote a web-based administration system for an "outfitters"
organization once.
There were about 1000 licensed outfitters that needed to be tracked
by a single-person administrator. So there was a private interface
plus a
public one. The public interface was supposed to
include a keyword search that combined outfitter location with
arbitrary
combinations of attribute keywords like "elk hunting, fly fishing,
walleye, pheasant" etc.

This organization had a limited budget and insisted on
a cheap shared host server. Mysql queries with mulitiple named
cursors
ran like lightning on my desktop linux box, but they ran like half-
frozen molasses
on the overloaded shared host server.

But application code that did "string-like" over a long string of
comma-separated
keywords worked, and it ran an order of magnitude faster (on the
chintzy shared
host).

On Oct 5, 11:30*am, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Just to be difficult.....

This is now a long thread, with numerous well-crafted arguments
exhaustively
defending good database design. But (largely for the sake of
argument)
there are times when bad design is called for.

For large, well-funded projects, performance can always
be purchased, usually for far less than the maintenance costs
associated with
bad design.

But smaller, not-so-well funded systems are part of the bell curve
too.
I wrote a web-based administration system for an "outfitters"
organization once.
There were about 1000 licensed outfitters that needed to be tracked
by a single-person administrator. So there was a private interface
plus a
public one. The public interface was supposed to
include a keyword search that combined outfitter location with
arbitrary
combinations of attribute keywords like "elk hunting, fly fishing,
walleye, pheasant" etc.

This organization had a limited budget and insisted on
a cheap shared host server. Mysql queries with mulitiple named
cursors
ran like lightning on my desktop linux box, but they ran like half-
frozen molasses
on the overloaded shared host server.

But application code that did "string-like" over a long string of
comma-separated
keywords worked, and it ran an order of magnitude faster (on the
chintzy shared
host).

On Oct 5, 11:30*am, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Just to be difficult.....

This is now a long thread, with numerous well-crafted arguments
exhaustively
defending good database design. But (largely for the sake of
argument)
there are times when bad design is called for.

For large, well-funded projects, performance can always
be purchased, usually for far less than the maintenance costs
associated with
bad design.

But smaller, not-so-well funded systems are part of the bell curve
too.
I wrote a web-based administration system for an "outfitters"
organization once.
There were about 1000 licensed outfitters that needed to be tracked
by a single-person administrator. So there was a private interface
plus a
public one. The public interface was supposed to
include a keyword search that combined outfitter location with
arbitrary
combinations of attribute keywords like "elk hunting, fly fishing,
walleye, pheasant" etc.

This organization had a limited budget and insisted on
a cheap shared host server. Mysql queries with mulitiple named
cursors
ran like lightning on my desktop linux box, but they ran like half-
frozen molasses
on the overloaded shared host server.

But application code that did "string-like" over a long string of
comma-separated
keywords worked, and it ran an order of magnitude faster (on the
chintzy shared
host).

On Oct 5, 11:30*am, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Just to be difficult.....

This is now a long thread, with numerous well-crafted arguments
exhaustively
defending good database design. But (largely for the sake of
argument)
there are times when bad design is called for.

For large, well-funded projects, performance can always
be purchased, usually for far less than the maintenance costs
associated with
bad design.

But smaller, not-so-well funded systems are part of the bell curve
too.
I wrote a web-based administration system for an "outfitters"
organization once.
There were about 1000 licensed outfitters that needed to be tracked
by a single-person administrator. So there was a private interface
plus a
public one. The public interface was supposed to
include a keyword search that combined outfitter location with
arbitrary
combinations of attribute keywords like "elk hunting, fly fishing,
walleye, pheasant" etc.

This organization had a limited budget and insisted on
a cheap shared host server. Mysql queries with mulitiple named
cursors
ran like lightning on my desktop linux box, but they ran like half-
frozen molasses
on the overloaded shared host server.

But application code that did "string-like" over a long string of
comma-separated
keywords worked, and it ran an order of magnitude faster (on the
chintzy shared
host).

On Oct 5, 11:30*am, eric.bouchardlefeb... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Just to be difficult.....

This is now a long thread, with numerous well-crafted arguments
exhaustively
defending good database design. But (largely for the sake of
argument)
there are times when bad design is called for.

For large, well-funded projects, performance can always
be purchased, usually for far less than the maintenance costs
associated with
bad design.

But smaller, not-so-well funded systems are part of the bell curve
too.
I wrote a web-based administration system for an "outfitters"
organization once.
There were about 1000 licensed outfitters that needed to be tracked
by a single-person administrator. So there was a private interface
plus a
public one. The public interface was supposed to
include a keyword search that combined outfitter location with
arbitrary
combinations of attribute keywords like "elk hunting, fly fishing,
walleye, pheasant" etc.

This organization had a limited budget and insisted on
a cheap shared host server. Mysql queries with mulitiple named
cursors
ran like lightning on my desktop linux box, but they ran like half-
frozen molasses
on the overloaded shared host server.

But application code that did "string-like" over a long string of
comma-separated
keywords worked, and it ran an order of magnitude faster (on the
chintzy shared
host).