I do a lot of work with Filemaker Pro, MySQL, HTML & Perl.  My best 
advice is to simply create a batch output process for your static or 
semi-static datum.  Provided that you have the storage space on your 
server, the file system will ALWAYS be faster than ANY database to 
retrieve data from.

Create a scheduled batch job to produce the static, non-repetative 
datum.  Use this result as your actual documents or else as files to be 
included.  It sounds to me like once a day might be often enough.  
That's for you to decide.  Perhaps you could simply create them based on 
the record modification date (if you have defined such a field in the 
table).

There's so many ways to go about this that I'm not even going there, 
unless you really want me to.... ;-)

For another thing, you don't really need Lasso if you're using >v4 of 
Filemaker Pro, since you can use the Web Companion plug in &/or CDML 
templates to replace it's functionality.  If you needed to have >10 
concurrent users then OK the $1,000 for FMPro Unlimited is a little 
steep... However, that might solve your crashing problems.  FMPro is 
usually very stable in my experience when run solo.

Also, there's ODBC & JDBC drivers for FMPro, which are handy too, though 
naturally the 'J' is for Java... sorry for the heresy, but I do both...

In your particular case, yes, static files sound like a faster solution 
to your problem.  Databases excel more when you have to deal with 
concurrent access and read/write operations rather than read-only 
scenarios.

I hope that helps.

On Monday, March 18, 2002, at 02:07 PM, Danny Arsenault wrote:

>
>
>> ----------
>> From:        Danny Arsenault[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>> Sent:        Monday, March 18, 2002 2:07:16 PM
>> To:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Subject:     Perl as alternative to MySQL
>> Auto forwarded by a Rule
>>
> Please let  me know if this is crazy!
>
> I am continually developing a site in Lasso and on their mailing list
> someone talked about how they had dispensed with the database backend
> altogether by using Lasso to read text files.
>
> This idea intrigues me.
>
> The reason I was thinking about dispensing with the DB backend is 
> because I
> have a very cranky database which is holding information that does not 
> need
> to be "dynamic." I have a couple thousand product thumbnails (and this
> number increases by about 2000 every month) and all of their sizes are
> sitting in an FMP database. Then there are a hundred fifty thousand 
> product
> descriptions, all sitting in the same FMP database, but they are rarely
> changed, so I could just update one "record" as needed rather than 
> keeping
> the whole thing dynamic just to take care of those few times.
>
> This database crashes a lot.
>
> Now, the folks on the Lasso list claim that this kind of file-based DB 
> thing
> is done all the time in Perl, and now that we have Perl on OS X, I 
> wonder if
> I should try to develop this part of it in Perl rather than learn MySQL,
> which seems a lot harder, and I'm not running NASA over here.
>
> So please let me know if there are any good sites or resources about 
> this,
> or if I'd better just go with MySQL or maybe something else entirely.
>
> (Oh yeah, I only know a tiny bit of Perl but I don't know any MySQL)
>
> TIA,
>
> Danny Arsenault
> Webmaster
> R & R Enterprises
>
> toll free phone...800 937-3880
> toll free fax........888 790-2437
>
> international phone.....011-603-471-0808
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>
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>

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