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

Keep one table - 20M rows isn't huge, and customers aren't exactly the kind of table that you can easily 'archive off', and the aggrevation of searching multiple tables to find a customer isn't worth the effort (SQL is likely to be much more efficient at BTree searching than your own invention is)

You will need to look into the performance and locking issues however - this will prevent your db from scaling.