[drupal-devel] forum.module dependent on comment.module

[Steven Wittens]

>What it really means is that there will be more nodes. On drupal.org the
>number of entries into the node table will about double. As long as nobody
>cares enough to provide hard test data to show Dries and us others that
>there is a negligible impact on performance this discussion is just hot
>air.
>
>Doing 50 node loads on a single page load can be fun. In contrast, the
>comments get pulled out in one single query.
>  
>
There are actually many more comments than nodes on drupal.org: 30172 
comments, 17281 nodes. Furthermore there are 23247 issue followups which 
I believe are not in the comments table.

Comments have a simplicity to them that makes it attractive to treat 
them separately. Should node access apply to comments? Should you be 
able to nodeapi a comment? Should comments be able to go into the book 
outline?

Plus, you'll essentially be performing two distinct kinds of queries on 
that table: 1) Fetch a node, 2) Fetch a node's associated 'comments' 
(also nodes). Most queries would have a type = "comment" or 
type!="comment" check on them anyway (or "comment = true/false" if you 
want any node as a comment), plus a bunch of other fields and code that 
would be checked depending on that value. You'd be throwing together two 
distinct things into one big table, which is rarely a good idea.

All of this sounds like a lot of work with no really good benefits in 
the long-run.

Steven Wittens