Hello Pavel, Tuesday, March 2, 2004, 7:20:03 AM, you wrote: PL> 2. ALTER TABLE `board` ORDER BY `threadid` DESC; I never knew you could do this - it's quite fascinating this list sometimes :) I do have a question though - if I use this "order by" table alteration, does MySQL remember it, or will I need to keep doing it every now and again? For example if I view the data in my table I can see the IDs like this: 1 2 3 250 5 6 323 (etc) This is simply where MySQL has gone back and re-used an old slot for a new record. However if I use your query technique for bringing back a block of records knowing they're in the exact right sequence - will MySQL just fragment this again over time? PL> Split your table in two tables, like: I can't see a real benefit of doing this. In my mind 675 bytes per thread isn't really that much. The only thing I could split away would be the subject of the thread (associated messages are held elsewhere) but in making a smaller table I'd just have to join the data back in again, surely? -- Best regards, Richard Davey http://www.phpcommunity.org/wiki/296.html -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php