low-end persistence strategies?

[Paul Rubin]

John Lenton <john at grulic.org.ar> writes:
> > Maybe you'll find this too naive, but why do you want to avoid 
> > concurrent accesses to a database that will be accessed 12 times a day ?
> 
> because every sunday at 3am your boss and his wife will both try to
> use the script at the same time, and delete everything.

Yes, I think that could be pretty typical.  For example, say I write a
cgi to maintain a signup list for a party I'm having.  I email an
invitation out to some friends with a url to click if they want to
attend.  If a dozen people click the url in the next day, several of
them will probably in the first minute or so after the email goes out.
So two simultaneous clicks isn't implausible.

More generally, I don't like writing code with bugs even if the bugs
have fairly low chance of causing trouble.  So I'm looking for the
easiest way to do this kind of thing without bugs.