Variable table names can also be useful if you have poor man's partitioning – separate tables with historical data , like "logs_201610", "logs_201611", "logs_20

Variable table names can also be useful if you have poor man's partitioning – separate tables with historical data , like "logs_201610", "logs_201611", "logs_201612", etc. Another scenario I just thought of: your schema is more or less dynamic. For example, Drupal lets developers/site administrators create entities with custom fields, each field gets its own DB table, and to load an entity you need to SELECT * FROM node LEFT OUTER JOIN field_data_field_name_1 ON .. LEFT OUTER JOIN field_data_field_name_2 ON .. ...