Sir Xsarus wrote:
I'd bet it's the number of rows as opposed to the actual content. I doubt they're loading the entire content as you only load so many posts at once.
From
what Kao said before, each post creates a new row. So you're right, it's definitely by number of posts; the actual content has no bearing on it. I don't really understand why the number of rows actually is affecting it, though. I'd imagine there's a
lot going on under the hood that I and other users are not aware of, but from just what Kao said I don't really see why the database couldn't support one thread with [however many rows could fit in the database's disk] posts in it. Like, I don't see why the database couldn't take just a single monolithic thread with all posts in it, as opposed to many smaller threads.
I mean, everything is indexed, as far as I can tell. That's O(1) time to access it, no matter where you are accessing it from. Theoretically.
The only issue I can see arising is if the database actually does load the entire thread when you enter it (or worse, loads all the threads on the first page or whatever when you enter the forum).
That said, I'm in the middle of my databases class right now, so my knowledge of databases is far from perfect.