mysql - 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 name, email, phone number.

Others are things like hobbies, skills, interests

Some are height, weight, skin color.

Each of these groups are used by the system at different times. In terms of being able to negotiate through the database I would prefer to have 7 tables each of about 8 fields. What is best practice to do?

EDIT: The data is going to be used in a search engine, for finding profile matches. Does this affect what I am doing?

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.