Database vs Data Structure?

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

erikcw a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> I'm working on a web application where each user will be creating
> several "projects" in there account, each with 1,000-50,000 objects.
> Each object will consist of a unique name, an id, and some meta data.
> 
> The number of objects will grow and shrink as the user works with
> their project.
> 
> I'm trying to decided whether to store the objects in the database
> (each object gets it's own row) or to use some sort of data-structure
> (maybe nested dictionaries or a custom class) and store the pickled
> data-structure in a single row in the database (then unpickle the data
> and query in memory).

Yuck.

Fighting against the tool won't buy you much - except for 
interoperability and maintainance headeaches. Either use your relational 
database properly, or switch to an object db - like ZODB or Durus - if 
you're ok with the implications (no interoperability, no simple query 
langage, and possibly bad performances if your app does heavy data 
processing).

> A few requirements:
> -Fast/scalable (web app)
> -able to query objects based on name and id.
> -will play nicely with versioning (undo/redo)

Versionning is a somewhat othogonal problem.

> Any input on the best way to go?

My very humble opinion - based on several years of working experience 
with both the Zodb and many RDBMS - is quite clear : use a RDBMS and use 
it properly.