which db should I use?

[Jim Richardson]

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On Mon, 13 May 2002 20:07:42 -0400,
 Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
> Jim Richardson wrote:
>> 
>> Peter Hansen wrote:
>> > It's unclear even after your description why you want to use a
>> > relational database.  Is it simply because that's part of the
>> > learning experience you've set for yourself, or are there particular
>> > performance requirements or a need for relational operations?
>> 
>> probably because I am a clewless newbie and don't know any other options
>> :) What is available that isn't relational?
> 
> Well, there's object (OO) databases, object-relational DBs, and there's 
> things that aren't typically described as databases although they are: 
> e.g. files in the file system such as I mentioned.  A database is more
> than just storage; normally it's a database manager (or DBM) which 
> provides all kinds of capabilities beyond just storage.
> 

um, ok :)

>> > Why not just store them as files in the file system?
>> 
>> searches are really slow with grep, on an ext3 filesystem. I wouldn't
>> mind a file based system, but will probably go with a db system in order
>> to learn more about SQL
> 
> No need to use grep, unless you want to.  Normally you would want to
> index the files, so that a search for key words becomes an extremely
> fast operation.  Even in a database...

wouldn't this be simply doing a db like approach? how would I go about
learning about this in python? I wouldn't mind not having to have a few
hundred MB of data in the newsspool *and* in some database. Would it be
possible to simple have an "index" file that would give me the same
search functions as SQL, seperate from the actual spool? 

> 
>> > Well, okay, if it's just to learn SQL.  But you might find better
>> > types of data for that purpose.
>> 
>> Well, probably better data out there, but this gets two birds with one
>> stone.
> 
> In that case, go for it.  (Personally, I would try to decouple the
> birds from each other and focus on one at a time, but then I've got
> dozens of birds flying around that I haven't even tried to catch yet...)

yeah, I know that feeling. I just half finished a bit of code that looks
at the spread of characters in pgp cypher text, it's interesting. Not
random at all. But that should be expected I guess, it just doesn;'t
have a pattern I can distinguish yet :)


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-- 
Jim Richardson
	Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, from watches to supercomputers, for grandmas and geeks.