On 08-01-2010 14:09, Tom Anderson wrote:
However, i would seriously question your need for a relational
database. They're the default choice for data storage these days, but
for no goodreason. You only actually need one when (a) you have
strong requirements about data integrity, concurrency,
transactionality, etc, *and* (b) you need a highly general query
interface. For a situation where one process appends records to a
log, and another reads from it, you don't.
Personally, i'd stick with a text (which could mean CSV of XML) file,
or possibly a directory full of text files. Less disk footprint, less
memory and processor overhead, and honestly no harder to write. You
can still write a webapp to browse the data, but back it with the
filesystem. Plus, you can look at the data with a text editor, grep,
etc, which eases development and gives you flexibility.
Even if a database is not needed, then I would suggest one unless good
reasons exists not to use a database.
Database is a lot more extendable if more features are needed later
*and* it really does not matter much.