maximum number of tables

[alex hall]

Hi

I've created a membership website - when a new member signs up, they are assigned a unique ID number from the members table and then the program goes on to CREATE them a new table for their mail messages, along the format of CREATE TABLE Mail(IDNumber), blah, blah, blah. Initially I thought this would provide for faster access to mailboxes than having one big table that held all the mail messages, and an ID number discriminating between who it was to or from.

Now I am wondering if this is wise, as the database now consists of over 1,400 tables and new ones being created hourly. Is there an upper limit to the number of tables one can have? Each Mailbox table is 16KB in size, and the database is OPTIMIZEd daily. The rest of the whole database (all the tables except mail tables) is about 1.5MB in size. Members do delete messages which are first copied into a table called Maildump. Which would provide the better solution? Are the issues with this type of design?