I have read many posts on here about this discussion but my question is specific.
Please read in entirety before replying.
I am wondering whether it is best to have potentially hundreds if not thousands of rows in a database or to split it across multiple tables.
The scenario is: I have a user who can be in ONE AND ONLY ONE city at a time. (There are multiple cities e.g. Paris, Berlin and London) Now in each city are lots of areas (potentially several hundred). I was thinking that giving each city its own table would be more efficient.
E.G:
rooms_london
- All areas of london in here as rows
rooms_berlin
- all areas of berlin in here as rows
And so on for Paris and any other cities that I add in future.
Then in PHP I could construct a query similar to:
SELECT * FROM rooms_$playerCity WHERE roomID = $playerRoom
Is this an efficient method or should I just add an extra column to a central rooms table.
If I've not been clear enough I will do my best to clarify anything that you need.
Many Thanks