Calvin Spealman wrote: > On 7/31/05, James Dennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>Peter Hansen wrote: >> >> >>>Steven D'Aprano wrote: >>> >>>Given that ZODB and PySQLite are simply Python extension modules, which >>>get bundled by your builder tool and are therefore installed >>>transparently along with your app by your installer, this is a total >>>non-issue at least with those packages. >>> >>>After all, it's not 1970 any more. ;-) >> >>Indeed; since 1970 we learned to prefer straightforward >>file formats where possible, reserving use of databases >>for structured data where the extra costs are justified. >> >>Sometime maybe databases will get better to the point >>that we don't need to distinguish so much between them >>and filesystems, but we're not there yet. Managing raw >>files, carefully, still has a place. >> >>-- James > > > Filesystems are a horrible way to organize information, and even worse > at structuring it. The mentality that there are any benefits of > low-overhead the outweigh the benefits of minimal database layers, > such as ZODB, BSD DB, and SQLite, is a large part of the reason we are > still stuck with such a mess. Those "extra costs" are so minimal, that > you wouldn't even notice them, if you hadn't convinced yourself of > their presense before performing or researching any realy benchmarks. > A simple RDBMS can be much easier to work with than any flat file > format, will likely be far faster in processing the data, and has the > benefit of years of coding making the code that actually reads and > writes your data as fast and stable as possible.
You don't use files? You're telling me that instead of copying & modifying my friend's bashrc, I should be querying a bunch of tables with SQL? Bull. Ordinary files, preferably in line-separated or tagged formats, are going to be a lot easier for most of us to work for a long time to come. This is especially true now that we have lots of good libraries for working with XML-based formats. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
