Should I assimilate all address lines to a single line? I'm new here, so I'll keep my question straight and short. I am building a webapp that lets users select some product, submit their details and place an order.

Currently, my ORDER table contains only one field for the address. I was planning to write code to assimilate all address lines to one, including the state, city, etc. I will then add functions to retrieve the address field and parse it for state, city, etc.

Is this a good approach, or will the database be faster if there is seperate field for states, cities and the like?
Separate fields. Every time. String operations are costly, especially cutting them up into bits.