Do you really need that RDBMS?
I think relational databases are used in more systems than they should be. In many systems the database is the very essence of the system, without a database it wouldn't make any sense. This isn't true for all systems, though. There are classes of systems which don't primarily exist to retrieve, process and store data in a database. Real-time systems which control hardware, games, communications software and graphics software are some examples. Often these systems still need persistent storage, for example to read configuration data and to write usage statistics. But does that storage have to be a relational database? The strengths of relational databases (flexible query language, security, ...) are not of much use in these applications but we still have to pay the costs: performance overhead, installation/administration issues and perhaps even financial costs.
So what to use instead? Files!
Text files for easy debugging, integration and portability or binary files for performance.
Should these files be XML files? Wait for the exciting answer in a future blog entry...
I think relational databases are used in more systems than they should be. In many systems the database is the very essence of the system, without a database it wouldn't make any sense. This isn't true for all systems, though. There are classes of systems which don't primarily exist to retrieve, process and store data in a database. Real-time systems which control hardware, games, communications software and graphics software are some examples. Often these systems still need persistent storage, for example to read configuration data and to write usage statistics. But does that storage have to be a relational database? The strengths of relational databases (flexible query language, security, ...) are not of much use in these applications but we still have to pay the costs: performance overhead, installation/administration issues and perhaps even financial costs.
So what to use instead? Files!
Text files for easy debugging, integration and portability or binary files for performance.
Should these files be XML files? Wait for the exciting answer in a future blog entry...
posted by Jan Mattsson at 11:11 PM
1 Comments:
Well, I find berkley data store pleasant in many cases. In OO systems I don't have to deal with OR mappings. There is only the de/serialization step. I get strong transactional characteristics when needed. I get high performance, up to 100 000 tps on my laptop.
/Steffo
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