> In my scenario, I am not searching for a particular name. My query is
> to list all names inserted in a specific week. if I split my 10
> million names based on time-range, i.e., one table per week, then I
> only need to search 1~2 tables with much smaller amount of data.

The problem with separate tables is when you have to query across
multiple tables.

Do you have any indices on your large table? How many rows per week?

> > Now, imagine I have a phonebook with 10 million names, searching for
> > a specific name becomes slower.
> >
> > Now, imagine I have 1 million phonebooks with 10 names each. Why does
> > this make searching for a specific name faster?

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, NexusDB, Oracle &
MS SQL Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
My thoughts:
http://blog.upscene.com/martijn/
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