Database / Page structure question

[thomas]

Hello,

I have the task of rebuilding a rather large cataloque of products as well as adding another dimension to it. The structure looks like this:

- bikes

-- full-suspension

--- product A

--- product B

--- product C

-- hard tail

--- product A

and so so forth ...

Now I need to add model years to it. So when a new model is released, the product can be duplicated, edited, and is now the default product, with the old one still being viewable via a direct link

I am trying to decide if it is better to keep the page structure as it is or change it to a flat structure with all products under one parent, with it's category in a page field (as well as the model year in a page field). I could then build the URLs with URLSegments

Is there any disadvantage to this approach? My main concern is of course speed, since this cataloque is rather large and bound to grow with the introduction of model years. 

Is listing pages in a tree find("parent=/bikes/hardtail/") much faster than finding by page field ("category=/bikes/hardtail,year=2015")?

Or is there another approach to consider?

Thanks for ideas, hints and thoughts

-thomas