[MUD-Dev] database design

[Lazarus]

I am curious how others have choosen to structure your player data
base with respect to variable count attributes.  In particular, I am
looking at how one would take a standard mud text player file and
store that information in a sql data base.  Most of the single
occurance fields like player name, level, gold, last logon time
.... that sort of thing maps fairly well onto a row in a table.  It
is just those things that you can have a variable number of entries,
like inventory and skill settings, that I start to ponder.

Is storing each item in its own row, indexed by a unique player
identifier a reasonable solution?  What happens when you have
100,000 players with 100-200 items each.  Can an ISAM data base
handle it?  How bad do 'pfile updates' become when you have to
update each of the 100-200 items in the ISAM data base every time
things change with the player inventory.  Likewise with skills.  Do
you store each skill in its own table with rows indexed by a unique
player identifier?  Do you use dirty bits to tell "this skill must
be updated" to avoid updating the entire list?

I suspect that data base design issues like this won't have a lot of
impact on the type of game I develop (5000 total player files, max
50 concurrent players), but would be interested in hearing some of
the techniques that people who develop MMOG's employ.
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