Hi there,
On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, Perrin Harkins wrote:
> We're veering WAY off-topic here
Maybe. But I for one am happy for the diversion. A lot of mod-perl
sites are doing just this kind of thing - after all, mod-perl is just
a link in a chain, it's of no use intrinsically without some things to
link together! Greg has given me some valuable insights.
> you can't guarantee your data will be in a consistent state without
> transactions or some other way to do atomic updates
[snip]
> (e.g. you're running a message board and who cares if a post gets
> lost somewhere) then transactions might be considered unnecessary
Might be? Having worked with a BTREE/ISAM package written in C and
assembler for the last 15 years or so, I wouldn't dream of using a DB
for some of this stuff. It would just get in the way and be 100 times
slower than my C code. I lock records as necessary so the data will
*always* be consistent and a whole bunch of gotchas simply evaporates.
For a lot of things on the Web, you can even get away with just the
operating system and flat files half the time.
I've got to admit that the way machine performance is going there may
come a time when it's just not worth the extra effort of tinkering in
the guts but we aren't nearly there yet. Why do so many people seem
to insist on using a sledgehammer to crack a nut? Horses for courses,
as we join our metaphors around here.
Just my 0.02p...
73,
Ged.
