Data Sizing

Zeth Baker

If I am build tables and approaching my size limit for a database does leveraging relationships instead of raw data decrease my overall database size. ie I have a flat table of cars with attributes in text. If I then converted that 1 table to many and leverages relationships would my overall size decrease or stay the same?

Chris Coleman

If you're using relationships to decrease raw data, you would typically see a decrease in overall database size, since the references aren't actually storing that data in the table that contains the reference.

For example:
Table 1 contains cars, and in that table we list Make, Model, and Color. If we instead decided to make a separate table containing our colors, and used table references in Table 1, you would no longer be retaining that color record in Table 1.

Some things to consider, however: the difference between leveraging references and raw data may not be very drastic -- this really depends on the size of your dataset as a whole. In addition, database storage is a bit unique in how it is managed in general -- see our documentation here for a detailed overview.