[thelist] Database vs. Flat file vs. XML

John Corry webshot at members.evolt.org
Thu May 23 15:56:01 CDT 2002


    All this talk about databasing has me thinking, what the
> advantages of databases over say an XML file or a flat file
> for simple projects. I had a collection of quotes in a
> database, which I moved to a flat file (since it was, imo,
> overkill).

I use databases on sites where they're available...but db hosting
generally costs a little more and ALL of my sites have features where
storing info in a file and including it in a template is useful.
Whenever I use features like that with flat files (php's getcsv()
function is killer!) I notice that I have to write a bunch of logic that
takes the place of SQL.

I wish there was a way to define a flat file as a 'table' and
select/update/insert rows from it through SQL statements...that would be
cool!

jpc




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