which way is better?

[acidglitter]

so i have a large member table right now with maybe 18 different fields, and only around 5 of them are being used often. would it be better to keep it that way, and continue using SELECT specific, field, name (instead of SELECT *)

 

or would it be better to have 2 tables, one with the most often used info and the other one with more specific info thats not selected as often?

[Barand]

it's better to use SELECT specific, field, name (instead of SELECT *) unless you really do need every column.

 

What is the table structure?

[acidglitter]

just like member_id

name

picture

member points

 

those show up on almost every page, then more specific details that are mostly only visible to the member like

date joined

last login

referrals

 

 

most of the fields are just the int/bigint or varchar types

[acidglitter]

??

[fenway]

It's useful to separate data vertically if there are TEXT/BLOB fields that are rarely used, or the main table is read often, updated rarely... this will improve query cache performance.