Database Design and Performance : mySQL and PHP

Question

I have made an image for this question:

What is the right design? All site's block inserting in only one table or separate tables? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I think it's better to use separate tables if you really care about performance in this case. Each table should include atomic information relevant to the specific object, so it would be better to have one table for articles and the second one for categories.

Answer 2

I suggest you to read this article: Database normalization

Separate the tables as much as you can, but don't forget to use indexes for the better performance.

Answer 3

The answer depends on how you'll be accessing the information.

If you're performing queries across many categories it may make sense to include all the categories in a single table. If your queries will only operating across a single query at a time, you're probably better off breaking the categories out into different tables.