The question you should ask yourself could be :
Do i need to Read / and write data from PP, sync back to access modified
values.
If you only read ini or xml are good fit if you need to sync back ODBC is the
best candidate you have to use some sql to do your query. You can download ODBC
drivers from most database vendors... For Access under XP, MDAC 2.8SP1 contain
all you need (it is normally already shipped with MS Windows XP SP3).
If you go for ini or XML :
About data structure :
Does my structure is static ( Cat1 Cat1.Sub1 Cat2.Sub3.sSub4 ) or is it dynamic
(like a tree Node -> Node -> Node .. ... Leaf )
If it is static and you do not have to many data => Ini is the best fit.
If not Xml is the good choice, ini can do the job but it start to be tricky.
You can organize your ini file like such :
[Year]
val1=ss
Val2=ssss
Val3=ssssss
[Year.Month]
Val1=
Val2=
...
.........
If you have for example book with title author ...
You can either have values like book1.title=
book1.author=
book2....
Or use a category like
Year.Month.Book1 for book1 and have values title, author, ....
--- In [email protected], "entropyreduction"
<alancampbelllists+ya...@...> wrote:
>
> I agree with Bruce. Since you already know and love (?) ini files, and
> providing volumn of data you want to keep isn;t too huge, there's sure to be
> a way of handling your data as ini sections/keys.
>
> If you have more than one book per year/month, you can go for:
>
> [yyyymmm]
> book1=xxx
> book2=yyy
>
> If you decide a database is needed, I might take back suggestion re using
> sqlite and propose using excel via odbc, assuming (a) it might be useful to
> see the whole dataset in one sheet without any additional work and (b) you're
> comfortable working with excel.
> he advantage of excel/odbc over sqlite is that you can enter the bulk of your
> data learning any scripting, just be adding to spreadsheet. Same goes for
> ini files, you can always stuff lots of entires in manually to start with, if
> that's a useful thing to do.
>
> --- In [email protected], "brucexs" <bswitzer@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In [email protected], "brother.gabriel" <brgabriel@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Well, I had not thought of a columnar text file; I was using ini out of
> > > instinct; but I need to pull data from individual fields without knowing
> > > their value. I suppose that could be done with vectors? I am good to go
> > > with ini files, but anything beyond that is going to be a learning curve.
>
> > Then go with ini. If you really just need to store the year month and an
> > assoicate value, then one format is
> >
> > [year]
> > 01=value
> > 02=value
> >
> > etc
> > ie use the year as the section, and the month as the key.
> >
> > It really depends on the exact data you want to process and how you want to
> > process it.
>
