free form texual database

[Dave Hammond]

In article <379 at fsc2086.FSC.COM> jim at fsc2086.FSC.COM (Jim O'Connor) writes:
>In article <397 at ispi.UUCP>, jbayer at ispi.UUCP (Jonathan Bayer) writes:
>> has to be able to store entries of arbitrary length (anywhere from a few
>> lines to several pages), and be indexed by at least a header, [...]
>Why not use the Xenix directory structure itself?  You could write a few
>programs to accept the data (sounds like a WP file), create the header[...]
>By storing this data in files under the directory structure, you allow
>yourself to use all of the existing Unix utilities to access this data.
>Sounds like being able to use grep, awk, more (or less), etc. would come
>in real handy when your user's would want to access the data.  You could
>also use your favorite editor as the "data entry" program.

I went this route on a project a few years ago, and was sorry later that
I did.  The advantage of data manipulation with standard tools was far
overshadowed by the tremendously inefficient disk usage.  Because of the
filesystem inode limit, we were bound to a maximum of ~16,000 inodes on
a 30mb partition.  With the average database entry size under 1K, the
partition was effectively "filled" at ~16Mb, or half capacity.




[inews food]

--
Dave Hammond
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