Jack Diederich wrote: > *ding*ding*ding* The biggest mistake I've made most > frequently is using > a database in applications. YAGNI. Using a database at all has it's > own overhead. Using a database badly is deadly. Most sites would > benefit from ripping out the database and doing something simpler. > Refactoring a database on a live system is a giant pain in the ass, > simpler file-based approaches make incremental updates easier. > > The Wikipedia example has been thrown around, I haven't looked at the > code either; except for search why would they need a database to > look up an individual WikiWord? Going to the database > requires reading > an index when pickle.load(open('words/W/WikiWord')) would > seem sufficient. > ... > > If there is interest I'll follow up with some details on my own LAMP > software which does live reports on gigs of data and - you > guessed it - > I regret it is database backed. That story also involves why > I started > using Python (the prototype was in PHP).
I'd be interested, if only selfishly to hear more potential use cases for *my* projects. ;) One of my goals for Dejavu* (my ORM) is to abstract persistence to the point that you can easily test your actual, live dataset against many potential storage mechanisms (i.e. multiple DB's, but also shelve, etc.). I need to finish the migration tools, but it's well on the way. Robert Brewer MIS Amor Ministries [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://www.aminus.org/rbre/python -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list