What's better - many small tables or one big table?

Question

I\'ve got a database which will store profiles about individuals. These individuals have about 50 possible fields.

Some are common things like, first name, last nam

Answer 1

It is hard to say, and is based on what the application requires. I would say to look into Database Normalization as it will show you how to normalize the database and in that it should shed light on what you would want to separate out into their own tables etc.