Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 12:21:12 -0500 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@mail.iowna.com> To: Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@shellyeah.org> Cc: Danny <dannyho@bigpond.net.au>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: good text based word processor, database question, and freebsd-uk Message-ID: <3A608E88.1D6D1250@mail.iowna.com> References: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0101131129590.18932-100000@zippy.shellyeah.org>
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Jonathon McKitrick wrote: > Installing is the easy part. My question is: > Is it worth the trouble to set up a DBMS to keep track of ascii text tips, > or does it make sense to just use a flat text file?B You're probably asking the great-grandaddy of unanswerable questions. Is it worth it? Of course, an SQL database is going to be considerably faster than a flat file on non-linear lookups, as well as random-access type maintenance (i.e. delete a record here, edit one there, etc) Plus, you could get very cute with techniques for searching on keywords, etc. The biggest question that will justify doing a DB (I think) will be how big do you expect it to get. With a few hundred tips on a decent powered machine, you should see no performance problem with a flat file, but with hundreds-of-thousands of records, complicated search techniques, or hundreds of simultaneous users, you're definately going to see a benefit to a RDB. Also, I think it will be easier to write a nice front-end if you've already got a well-planned DB back-end. Depending on your user-base, however, a nice front-end might be overkill. It's dependent on these facters and possibly others. -Bill To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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