Is this a proper use for hstore?

Question

We're setting up a new project and I was wondering if hstore (nosql/key=>value) would appropriate to use in this situation.

We have ~5k providers with fairly standard fields like agency name, first and last names, etc... but there 9 or so other fields that I think could all be incorporated into an hstore column: languages spoken, services provided, funding/payment types accepted, etc... basically many to one relations. A provider of N services may speak English, Spanish and Russian for example.

Searches will need to be run on this data - like finding a provider for respite that speaks Russian and takes Medicare.

So is an hstore OK, or should this be a traditional relational setup?

Answer 1

If the fields are of a uniform setup, the overall management of using traditional columns/indexes will be less trouble and perform a little faster than using hstore. The main reason you would want to use hstore is when the keys are not uniform from one instance to the next, and you still need to perform regular queries on those keys.