Web 2.0 considerations | Table design

12.2 Performance best practices for database customizations

Your site design requirement may require you to customize the schema. The base out-of-box WebSphere Commerce schema should only be modified in such a way that your customizations do not impact the functioning and maintenance of WebSphere Commerce. Otherwise, the cost of your customizations could snowball. For example, you might customize your schema in such a way that certain aspects of administration tools may stop functioning properly or, perhaps, fix packs may not be installed successfully, or the WebSphere Commerce migration program may not support your schema customization and thus fail to function.

Generally, you would want to add new indices and tables. In some rare circumstances you may want to add some columns to a table. In such a situation you should first consider using the extra customizable fields available in the table.

In this section we do not go into detail about the pros and cons of database customization, or the detailed methodology. In this section, we discuss the performance considerations to keep in mind while you design your database customizations.