On Tue, 29 May 2001 09:06:50 -0700, Will W wrote:
>I need this to be compact enough
>for fast downloads and free of any proprietary code (it will be freeware
>available over the net). I have identified DBI:CSV as one possible
>approach.
I personally wouldn't use XML or CSV. Why not? Lack of efficiency. All
the data needs to be read from the file before you can do anything with
it. Since you're planning to have a user interface, you probably will
have a long-running script, so it might not really matter.
>Are there any options other than CSV that are widely available
>on end-user machines? For instance, can I expect that ODBC or ADO will
>work on most Windows platforms?
But then, you still need an underlying database engine.
From what I gathered, MSIE5.x uses Jet for itself, so in this case, if
people have that browser, they'll probably will have the database
engine, too, I suppose.
You might incorporate support for MySQL, but in such a way that people
will have to download MySQL themselves. Your program would then be
nothing but a front-end to MySQL. It wouldn't be the only one (see the
"contrib" page at MySQL's website for the competition). Your edge could
then be that you provide a toolkit for easily making customised database
front-ends, not a generic database interface. RAD for DB, so to say.
--
Bart.
