Storing csv as string or individual floats

[James James]

Hi,

I have a MySQL database which has been running for a many years without any problems. It stores out test results which are in the form of a csv file. Each data column in the csv file is converted to a comma delimited string and stored in the database.

So for example, 2.5,3.5,4.5,5.5,6.6....

The number of data points varies from around 100 - 400 but recently this increased to 4000+ data points and the test results have increased from a few MB per week to around 96GB. We store the results for each column in a text string for ease of graphing.

We need to store all the test file so i`m wondering if the text field is the correct way to be going. Any ideas on whether the database is okay or should i be looking at another way of storing all this data?

Many thanks.

James