George Sakkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Oct 7, 10:15 pm, Pat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I don't understand why I need a database when it should just be a > > matter of defining the data structure. > > Picking an appropriate data structure depends on the kind of > functionality you want to provide. […] > The more general information you might want to get from the data, > the more obvious it becomes that you need a real database.
Thanks very much for posting this answer; I tried to do something similar but couldn't get at the essential points the way you did here. Perhaps the original poster is confusing “you should use a database” with “you should use a database stored in a fully-concurrent dedicated database management system”. Far from it: with Python 2.5 you have SQLite (in the ‘sqlite3’ module), which would be ideal for implementing a powerful relational SQL database used directly by one program instance, without needing a full-blown database management system in a separately-administrated server application. -- \ “Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.” | `\ —Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_, 1906 | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
