When designing your database, you may need to estimate how big your database will be when filled with data. Estimating the size of the database can help you determine the hardware configuration you will need for:
Estimating the size of your database can also lead you to determine that your database design needs refining. For example, you may determine that the estimated size is far too large to implement practically in your organization and that more normalization is required. Conversely, the estimated size may be smaller than expected, allowing you to denormalize the database to improve query performance.
To estimate the size of a database, estimate the size of each table individually, and then add the values obtained. The size of a table depends on whether the table has indexes, and if so, what type of indexes.
| Designing Tables | Query Tuning |
| Indexes | Table and Index Architecture |