title: What's better - many small tables or one big table?
body: <p>I've got a database which will store profiles about individuals. These individuals have about 50 possible fields. </p>
  
  <p>Some are common things like, first name, last name, email, phone number.</p>
  
  <p>Others are things like hobbies, skills, interests</p>
  
  <p>Some are height, weight, skin color.</p>
  
  <p>Each of these groups are used by the system at different times. In terms of being able to negotiate through the database I would prefer to have 7 tables each of about 8 fields. What is best practice to do?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> The data is going to be used in a search engine, for finding profile matches. Does this affect what I am doing?</p>