On Dec 7, 12:34 am, Kelie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks Chris, Tim and Yu-Xi. I'll follow your advice and use database.
Hi Kelie If you're happy going with sqlite then stick with it. If on the other hand you were considering XML because you're more comfortable with that (e.g. you find XML easy to work with and you're more familiar with XPath/XQuery than SQL) then you could use XML if you wanted. The choice is not between XML and databases, it's between XML and relational. There are -- shock-horror! -- full-featured XML databases too (e.g. Berkeley DB XML, which is lightweight, fast, embeddable and open source like sqlite, with indexing, transactions etc. if you need that). XML is very widely used in publishing and not only as a data transfer format which happens to be human-readable. The main reason for going for a database over a file in your case is I'd guess to support searching, since performance wouldn't be an issue these days with a few thousand records. Developers tend to have strong feelings in favour of relational (= "tabular" storage) over xml database (= "hierarchical" storage) but this will change. If you are asking what would work for your relatively simple use-case, the answer is both, since the storage model isn't that important for a contacts address list. What would work best for you in this case is whichever you would prefer... TimvN -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
