FW: RE: [thelist] Help with Database

[Ken Moore]

Hi, all

>
>The site will initially offer a few hundred titles and will eventually
>expand to over a thousand. Each title will have to be searchable by
>numerous variables: Title, Genre, Actors, Director, Year, etc.
>
>I want to make sure that the database will be flexible enough that if
>the site gets really big that we won't have to modify the DB much.
>
>I have had some experience with sites that are semi dynamic, running off
>a database that was just huge text file.
>
>My question is what should I be looking at to create a database for this
>project? Can I run a Db from an excel file or a file maker file, or
>something else?
>
Carol J wrote;
>My 2 cents on this:
>- a huge text file is not a database.
TRUE
>- excel is not a database and it's not scalable. It's a performance
>nightmare AND a data nightmare
TRUE
>- Scalable means *not* Access, *not* Excel, probably not PostGres, and
>maybe not MySQL.
MAYBE
Access works upn to approx. 40,000 entries. Up to that point it works fine 
and it is much easier than amy SQL database.


>if by that you hope for thousands or millions of hits, then only the
>last two will do.
TRUE. Access will work up to several 100's of hits per hour. By 1000 to 2000 
per hour, it could cause touble in performance speed and data corruption.

For your environment Oracle is probably best.
PROBABLY NOT.
Oracle is over kill. Do not use an electric knife to cut you butter. Use 
Oracle ONLY if you have multiple sites, have many variations in how data is 
entered and need to be standardized, and if you have lots of $$$$. Otherwise 
use MS SQL or MySQL.

>- A database that is "flexible enough" means reasonably normalized to
>the DBA and unreasonably normalized for the programmer.
BOTH ARE REQUIRED.

CONTACT ME OFFLINE if you like at cor412 at hotline.com

Ken

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