one big catalog or several small ones?

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Hi,
i just wonder what is better in terms of performance:
one big catalog with all pictures or several small ones?
(for example: on catalog with 200.000 pictures or 20 catalogs with 10.000 each)
Is there any difference in performance?
Does PM+ work better with one large database or does it not matter?
And, is there a maximum number of catalogs, or a number at which it is better to use larger catalogs?
Thanks in advance for the answer.
Thomas

[ahoward]

Theoretically, all other things equal, one catalog would see better performance than multiple. In real life, the differences would not be noticeable. But what would be noticeable is things like doing something like a version upgrade or catalog maintenance tasks. Every so often we release an update to Photo Mechanic Plus which requires you to also do an update on the catalog from the Catalog Management Window. This is trivial with one or two catalogs, it would get tedious with over a dozen.

200k images should be no issue for the catalog, I've heard from a customer with over 7 million images who said performance remained fantastic.

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Thanks for the answer.
Yes that's right, that's tedious, to do the maintenance task for 20 catalogs. I also once asked if there could not be one singel button for maintenance or reintegration tasks for all catalogs together. Another disadvantage is that you cannot create collections across catalogs.
I had initially opted for multiple catalogs out of safety, but I would now switch to one large catalog as well.
Currently, the long time for the creation still holds me back. (All images are on an external HD, the metadata collection should take a day, the preview creation at least another).