Database design: one huge table or separate tables?

Question

Currently I am designing a database for use in our company. We are using SQL Server 2008. The database will hold data gathered from several customers. The goal of the databa

Answer 1

Partioning is definately something to look into. I had a database that had 2 tables sharded. Each table contained around 30-35million records. I have since merged this into one large table and assigned some good indexes. So far, I've not had to partition this table as it's working a treat, but I'm keep partitioning in mind. One thing that I have noticed, compared to when the data was sharded, and that's the data import. It is now slower, but I can live with that as the Import tool can be re-written ;o)