Am designing a database for an online dating application.A user is supposed to register and thereafter create a profile.The profile contain a user background,basic,appearance and interests information.Should i have one large table in my database to store a user profile or should i partition the table into small subtables e.g i divide the table into subcategories(basic,appearance,background,interest s).

Logically, you want one table for all attributes that have a 1:1 correspondence with the user, and other tables for attributes that have a many:1 correspondence - i.e. a normalised set of tables for the data.

Physically, if you have very many (hundreds or thousands) of 1:1 attributes then your DBMS may require or prefer that you vertically partition into a number of smaller tables.