Hi,
First I want to say that I am pretty new to Perl and do not know much
at all about relational databases. However, I am the kind of person
who likes to go in depth with whatever I am working on. I also know
that this debate has been covered a lot here and elsewhere and I have
read through a lot of posts on the subject. However, I still have some
questions.
OK, I have a retail website that I have been running for a while. I
have roughly 1000 different part numbers and more to come. I built a
simple flat file database to keep track of everything and wrote a
script that will keep quantities updated, give me editing
capabilities, and also generate all of the html display pages for each
category with one click of a button. All of this is pretty crudely
written but it works well and I have been very happy with it.
I am always thinking of new features and such and have decided to
redesign my database to include these new ideas and more. I also have
learned a lot more Perl since I wrote the original scripts so it will
be a lot more efficient and organized.
My plan is this: each file in my database will hold 1000 parts. Each
page or group of pages will be designated for a certain category of
parts. Finding the proper page in the database will simply involve
taking the part# and removing the last 3 digits. This gives the page.
I then will load the page into a hash and will access the needed
information directly using the part number itself as the key. The
given information will then be loaded into an array and split so that
each piece of information (part description, quantity, price, etc) can
be easily used.
So, my questions are:
1 Is there a significant increase in speed if I do this kind of thing
in a relational database?
2 Is there any inherent problems with this idea?
3 Am I crazy?
4 What are your reasons for thinking this either a good or a bad idea?
I know what the answer to #3 is! I realize that this would probably be
much simpler and faster if I just used a packaged script and forgot
about writing it all myself but I just can't bring myself to give up
the satisfaction I will feel when I successfully complete this and
watch it work for the first time. Besides I'm sure to learn a LOT more
by doing it myself rather than using someone else's work.
Anyway, sorry about the lengthy post! Thanks in advance for your input.
Andy Schafer
.
eep which will effectivel