At 10:14 AM -0400 5/6/08, Andrew Ballard wrote:
On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 9:21 AM, tedd <tedd.sperling@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I will respectfully (though strongly) disagree here, tedd. If you are
building a guest book and all you need is a place to "store and
retrieve stuff," store it in a file rather than a database. If you
only have one form to collect and store information, this will be more
than sufficient.
If you are doing something more complex where you need to relate
information (say, for example, forum members <-> forum topics <->
forum messages, or customers <-> orders <-> items, etc.) then you are
far better off to think about what you need to store and plan your
database first. Doing that will make your data model much better from
the start, and you can also start planning out what your HTML pages
need to be collecting as it relates to how the data is stored.
Andrew
Andrew:
Well, you can certainly disagree -- we all do things differently.
What works for me, doesn't work for you and vise versa -- but that's
the way of things.
I understand relational dB's and how to use them, but I don't think
the OP was talking about that, but rather getting something much more
simple up and running.
Rob, who I respect greatly, said that 90 percent of what you are
doing should be decided before you start programming. But, I never
work that way either.
I always jump right in and use the computer to design stuff. I never
resort to making a story-book layout or poster board work-up or
anything like that. I just don't work that way.
Sure, people can criticize the way I do things if they want, but I
still get things done that work and are usually under budget with
respect to money and time -- so I must be doing something right.
From my perspective, it's far better for a newbie to actually produce
something than it is to get lost in the details and never see
anything materialize. Besides, trial and error is a great way to
learn.
Oh, and I seldom use the file system for anything. MySQL works just
fine for storing things. I'm even considering Stut's recommendation
to use a dB rather than sessions -- I think there is real value there.
In any event, different strokes for different folks -- happy coding. :-)
Cheers,
tedd
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