Re: [OT] MySQL for Web Apps

[Bill Stephenson]

You've all made great points and I'm sure that I'll follow the advice 
given but I'll ask you to indulge me just a bit more.

Chris, you've almost convinced me, but I have to ask, is it really so 
inefficient to search through one directory with 5000 sub-directories 
to find one that matches the (user) name your looking for? Isn't that 
what Perl is supposed to be good at?

If you had 100,000 directories you could alphabetize and place them in 
sub-directories that would hold, on average, less than the 5000 
mentioned above.

If each directory held 2000 files and you know the name of the one your 
looking for, it should take half as long to find the file as the 
directory it resides in. If only one user can access the files in their 
directory than locking files and race conditions aren't even an issue. 
Even if you searched for a string to match in each of these 2000 files 
would it take unbearably long?

It occurs to me that the unix os is basically a database in and of 
itself and perl interacts directly with the os, therefore, using it to 
store and retrieve data may not be that inefficient.

Now, if you have one server dedicated to serving only 2500 users and in 
2-3 years you have 5000 users and upgrade that server to one twice as 
fast and big, and so on....

The main disadvantage of using a database engine like MySQL is that 
users cannot define data fields. If other applications are going to 
access the data in question than you must reformat it to provide the 
access. And again, I'm lazy (actually, I have other things I like to 
do) and really don't want to learn more. I'd rather use what I already 
know and leverage what I already have.

If Rick's "Dream" comes true I can just port the data at that time. 
There are a lot of programmers out there working on faster, easier to 
use, database engines that have more features. Chris, you may be right, 
XML may be a fad, but the next big thing in data storage/retrieval 
could be right around the corner too.

The above are some of the excuses I've come up with to avoid spending 
more time learning stuff. If I'm deluded, it's because I have boxes 
upon boxes of software that doesn't work anymore and time invested in 
each of them. It's not that I don't believe that MySQL and other 
database engines have a place, I'm just trying to avoid learning how to 
use them if I don't really need too.

If no one here still believes that computers will soon be fast enough 
to write slugware like I mention above, then I'll start cracking the 
books.

Kindest Regards,

Bill Stephenson