One database or many for multicountry web application

Question

let's get some different points of view about this situation I have.

I'm creating a (asp.net) web application with database (sql server express, max 10gb db size).

This application manages entities but entities are related to countries, one country - many entities.

Before anything, I can't predict how the db is going to grow. This is a personal/hobby project I'm doing in my free time.

My concerns are if I should create a specific copy of the database per country. My reasons to think that are:

• Size of the databases will be smaller, so I won't have problems of size starting with the SQL Server Express.
• Again, the db size. As it is smaller per country, performance will be better.
• Can do maintenance tasks (backups, deployments) at low peak time for every country.
• In case of different laws about protecting data per country I can adapt each db to the specific law.
• Customized text search per country. This is not a problem really because i think I could create a view per different country and do text search of that view.

Then, if I have only one database for all the countries there are some advantages:

• Maintenance is going to be simpler. Only one database means doing things just once.
• No reduntant code. I use Stored Procedures a lot of this web app. One change would only need to be published once in production.

God! writing down pros of each alternative seems to make multiple database a winner! It seems that single database is for lazy people...

Anyway, I'd like to read more points of view, so please guys, feel free to contribute with your thinkings. Thanks!

Answer 1

I would choose 1 database.

For the easier maintenance work. There are almost 200 countries in the world, even if you have a database for half of them. The day you want to add a column to a table and you have to change it in every database is going to be a nightmare.(making sure you don't forget 1 database or if you mistype the name, etc).

Also, with the power/capacity of current computers, performance shouldn't be a problem. (unless it's very important for your program).