design question

[Avenger001]

Is it better to have one table with many entries
Example
----------
Email
Name
Address
City
....

or to have multiple tables with fewer entries
Example
----------
Table1

Email
Name

Table2

Address
City

Basicly, i'm looking at designing one table with about 25+ entries or spliting them up in to 3-4 categores and creating a table for each, and i'm looking for the better option, the option that will give me better performance. To me either one doesn't matter, but if one will performe better, obviously i'd like to use that one.

[M Owen]

That depends on your purpose ... What normal form are you looking to get to? Oh, what database is this to be in?

[Avenger001]

It's going to run on MySql, and possibly MsSql later on.

It's basicly a submition form. The user will enter his info, name, email, address...and so on.

My inquiry is basicly, is it better to split these into categories then give each catagory it's own table in the database, or just create one table in the database and throw all these entries in there.

I'm leaning more thward splitting everything up.

Here's a better idea of what the database entries will look like and possibly how I'm thinking of splitting them up.

1-
Email, Name, Address, Phone...

2-
Email notifications, SMS notification, other notifications...

3-
XML feed1, XML feed2, XML feed3....

Or, should I just put all of these into one table??

[ergas]

In your example, it's better to have one table.
All information you have specified is unique, so there is no need to make another table.

Create another table, for example, if you want to have more then one email for one person:

TablePerson
---------------
Person_ID
Name
Address
City

TableEmails
---------------
Person_ID
Email

You can enter more emails for one person.
Person_ID is primary key in TablePerson.
Person_ID in TableEmails isn't a primary key, duplicates are allowed.