mySQL - Single(Big) or Multiple(Small) DBs

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The Hostgator web hosting thread below was started by jenolan on 2010-07-27 06:32:26:

As I wander around fixing peoples systems, sometimes I notice that they have their whole site loaded into one DB others have every application in its own DB. Not talking about DB’s with gigabytes of data, rarely do I see anything more than a few megs.

Now the question is this, for normal sites is there an advantage to keeping to one DB to minimise the file opens et al by mySQL. So one database gets to be more efficient because it ends up being in memory ‘more’ or does splitting give the advantage to having more buffers.

I know some of this would be affected by the server setup, number of users (if a shared server) and probably the phase of the moon .. but is there any sort of (partially)definitive rule-of-thumb?

Thanks,
Larry

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