On Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:05:27 -0800 Jonathan Gardner <jgard...@jonathangardner.net> wrote: > Let me give you an example. I worked on a system that would load > recipients for email campaigns into a database table. The SQL database > was nice during the initial design and prototype stage because we > could quickly adjust the tables to add or remove columns and try out > different designs.. However, once our system got popular, the > limitation was how fast we could load recipients into the database.
Just curious, what database were you using that wouldn't keep up with you? I use PostgreSQL and would never consider going back to flat files. The only thing I can think of that might make flat files faster is that flat files are buffered whereas PG guarantees that your information is written to disk before returning but if speed is more important than 100% reliability you can turn that off and let PG use the file system buffering just like flat files. -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain <da...@druid.net> | Democracy is three wolves http://www.druid.net/darcy/ | and a sheep voting on +1 416 425 1212 (DoD#0082) (eNTP) | what's for dinner. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list