UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

No no...this is VERY helpful.

One thing to note: all of the field names are consistent, there are just a lot of them. Using your example, there are not multiple fields that represent the same category data.

Instead, there are multiple fields within each category that would not apply to other categories. For example, a car would have a field for engine block size whereas a maintenance package would have a coverage plan. Obviously, neither of these products would share those fields.

The idea of having one large table seems feasible. The one thing I worry about is that making the transactions take longer and increasing the size of the database.

Does the transaction overhead associated with a SQL Select statement increase with the number of columns?

Also, will the empty fields related to other categories take up a significant amount of hard drive space or memory?

Thanks again for your help...