Gordon Tillman wrote:
On Dec 16, 2005, at 13:18, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Can anyone advise on the best mode? At the moment I am inclined to
create a
one-card stack that links to a text file. In the text file, one line
of text
would contain all of the data for one card. So to "go" to card 533
the computer
would simply read line 533 of the text file, parse it, and set up
the data
onto the fields. This method seems really good as searches are
very fast using
"lineoffset", and if things get fouled up I can simply open the text
file in
any word-processor and fix it. I also like the fact that I don't
have to
continually save the stack -- in my script the text file would be
continually
updated as fields are changed, cards created/deleted.
I would recommend that you use the altSQLite external from http://
www.altuit.com/webs/hemingway/AltuitCover/default.htm.
This external is a wrapper around the excellent SQLite database
engine. You can read more about SQLite here:
http://sqlite.org/
Works very well, is extremely fast, and can handle even much larger
databases that what you are needing. Plus it is less expensive than
than the Valentina route. The database file is also fully cross-
platform.
sqlite sounds like a good option - but I'm not sure it is needed. For
5000 records of 50 fields, that's not a scale of problem that *requires*
any database. There may be other aspects of your problem that cause you
to need a database (complex searches or sorting, maybe), but for many
purposes, the simple text file with CR + TAB delimiters should be adequate.
I have a couple of such projects - the larger one is 8-9,000 records of
40 fields per record - around 1.4 Mb total data. Straightforward
searches - e.g. filtering to display only those records that match a
couple of values or even regexes in specific fields - are, to all
intents and purposes, instantaneous. I don't do much in the way of
inter-record combinations, though I do some (it's a pedigree database,
and I do things like multi-generation pedigrees and offspring reports).
This is done with a simple text file for storage, with a the data held
in a Transcript variable.
You should be careful about how / when you save changes (I do so only on
user command, and keep N generations of backups, where N is
user-selectable) - but my database is close to read-only - changes are
infrequent and usually arrive in a large batch.
My advice is to not leap into using a more complex solution until you've
proven a need for it.
--
Alex Tweedly http://www.tweedly.net
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