Re^2: Basic Perl trumps DBI? Or my poor DB design?

For a single-tasking, (ie. no concurrency issues) application, a well-written, non-DB (RDBMS) solution will always be able to out-perform an RDBMS solution for any given task.

Not necessarily. In over simplified theory you would be correct but, what if you have terabytes or exabytes of data to search?

You make the inaccurate assumption that DBMS == RDBMS, which is not true. It may be that 90% or more of all databases are built around the relational model, there are plenty that are not.. consider DataWarehousing, an often misunderstood concept. RDBMS solutions rarely fit the needs of Datawarehousing. What about ODBMS (object database management systems) such as Poet?

Jason L. Froebe

No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil, Stargate SG-1

Comment on Re^2: Basic Perl trumps DBI? Or my poor DB design?

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Re^3: Basic Perl trumps DBI? Or my poor DB design? by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Oct 23, 2004 at 19:16 UTC
No over simplified theory. The volume of data is irrelevant. A "well-written" application wouldn't search, it would index. That is no inaccurate assumption, it is a deliberate limiting of scope of my assertion. Examine what is said, not who speaks. "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham "Think for yourself!" - Abigail "Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon	[reply]
Re^4: Basic Perl trumps DBI? Or my poor DB design? by jfroebe (Parson) on Oct 23, 2004 at 21:30 UTC
A "well-written" application wouldn't search, it would index. Now I understand your reasoning... you really aren't talking about the use of a DBMS or not. It would be more accurate for you to be suggest the embedding of a simple database-like mechanism (a.k.a. DBMS) into the application level rather than accessing a DBMS backend (i.e. MySQL, Postgres, Sybase ASE, Oracle, etc). That's the crux of your argument: embedding is always better than not with single user access. I believe the cliche "it depends" applies here. It depends on the type of data, the amount of data, what you're going to be doing with the data, etc. There is much to consider before choosing between an embedded dbms or a backend dbms (and also which dbms as well). please don't misunderstand me, you bring up excellent points but I don't think you were conveying them like you intended. Jason L. Froebe No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil, Stargate SG-1	[reply]


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