Webmaster Forum / ASP / Database Access / August 2007

Greetings, folks.

Hoping someone here can give me even a half-informed (or at least
well-argued) opinion on which route to take for better performance (or
indeed if there actually will be any difference) between these two options;

- Hold all data (approximately 100 columns) in a single table, or
- Separate data into smaller tables (of approximately 20 columns each).

Only 5 or so columns will be accessed with any regularity; my concern is
whether there'd be more overhead in having large records in a single table,
or having multiple tables.

For the record, the data'll be in SQL Server 2005 Express and accessed
through classic ASP.

With everything only in design phase at the moment, I'm not very keen on
creating & mass-populating with dummy data to do performance analyses (call
me lazy, but I'd expect someone out there has already gone through the
exercise).

Thanks in advance for your help.