Reasonable Size Limit to options entry

Question

I have a set of ~4700 records that I need to have locally searchable for my plugin via an auto-complete (it's the Google Product Search categories). Would it be okay to store this data in the options table as an array or would it be better to actually create a separate table in which to store this data?

It's about 317k. Would I be asking for trouble if I just stored it as an array in the options table? Does each page load cache all the site options?

Answer 1

Each page load triggers a database query that reads all the options (from what I'm aware the option records are all auto-loaded).

Anyway 317 K is not something you should worry about, but there are better ways to store your data, for example a simple text file that gets read trough ajax only when the search is being made (first character typed I guess).

You can cache the data after the first load if you want, using wp_cache_set() (and delete it when you're updating the list). You need some persistent object cache plugin to keep it across page requests.