Replace mailing_list_url with an integer for database relations

[andygrunwald]

Hey,

the database scheme can be (easily) optimised.
The field mailing_lists.mailing_list_url is a VARCHAR(255) and is used many times as a unique identifier for other tables (e.g. compressed_files, messages, messages_people, etc.).
In every relation table the complete string is inserted.
This is not good for two reasons:
a) Storage: We need a lot more storage to store a (long) string such mailing_list_url
b) Joins: Joins are not so performant as integer

How to improve this?
We add a new field called mailing_list_id into table mailing_lists and define this as primary key. In every relation table we only insert the integer mailing_list_id.
With this we can avoid the two disadvantages above.

What do you think about this suggestion?

[gpoo]

Have you run some profiling to check how different is the performance? If so, may you share the results?