I'm very new to database design, and fairly new to html etc in general, so please bear with me. My goal is to create a database of objects, each of which has many attributes (which are the same attributes between objects). Then I'd like to create a custom search engine to search by object name, or any attribute. My first question is very simple, about the general structure of the database. Coming from OOP (Java), my first thought is to create a text file for every object. But, considering speed, I think a script could use a single text file equally well. So my question is, would searching say 500 small text files vs one larger text file noticeably slow down the search? I'd prefer multiple files for ease of editing and human reading, but only if it doesn't impact the speed.

The second question is about the search itself, and might belong in a scripting subforum, but I'll put it with the rest of my question for now. Is there any way to not reload the page when you search? I'm thinking that when you press submit, a script loads the results into a certain part of the page, much like deviantart.com.

Thanks for reading.