Yes, the proposed ‘better’ structure basically amounts to building your own indexes. Normally, I’d assume it is better to use the RDBMS’s own engine to do that,

Yes, the proposed ‘better’ structure basically amounts to building your own indexes. Normally, I’d assume it is better to use the RDBMS’s own engine to do that, don’t roll your own. There may well be some subtlety to the indexing capabilities of MySQL I’m unaware of though - could easily imagine myself making rookie mistakes like assuming that it has same indexing capabilities. So, to the post’s point - if I were working on a MySQL db I would probably benefit from an old hand’s advice to warn me away from dangerous assumptions. On the other hand I also remember an extremely experienced MS SQL Server DBA giving me some terrible advice because what he had learned as a best practice on SQL Server 7 turned out to be a great way to not get any of the benefits of a new feature in SQL Server 2005. Basically, we’re all beginners half the time.