Pickle vs XML for file I/O

[crystalattice]

Simon Hibbs wrote:
> I've recently gone through a similar evaluation of my options for
> persisting data. Object serialization to pickles or XML is a very easy,
> quick way of persisting data but it does have drawbacks. I'm not a
> professional developer, so if there are errors in my analysis, I'd love
> to be corrected.
>
> Suppose you make some changes to the object format - adding some new
> attributes or properties. Suddenly your existing test data is useless.
> At least with XML you can edit the files by hand to add dummy data, but
> with pickles that's not an option and even with XML it's a painful and
> error prone process.
>
> Idealy you need to be able to browse and edit your saved data outside
> the main program, to scan for errors, fix them manualy and easily
> update your data structure as the application data model grows and
> changes.
>
> There are good reasons why relational databases are the default data
> store for many professional applications because you can parse and edit
> the data very easily using external tools. Personaly I'd go with
> SQLite. It's soon to be a part of the Python standard library with 2.5
> and is very compact. It can be a lot more work than just serializing
> automaticaly, but there are toolkits such as SQLObject and SQL Alchemy
> that can automate this as well.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Simon Hibbs
That's a good idea.  I may implement that later.  Right now though I'm
mostly doing this as a hobby and an open-source project, so I don't
want to add too much extra to the project.  I want to see what the base
Python language is capable of before I start using other toolkits and
libraries.  I just barely got comfortable with the OOP "mindset" so
even working w/ classes and objects is still a struggle sometimes.