TinyTables are an approach to management of small amounts of data. As long as they're used in such a way that they can be swapped out easily, they're quite useful. I wrote DatabaseAPI for the purpose of making it possible to swap out a database implementation with a better one. Along with that I created the TinyTablesPlus product, which permits programatic updates of a TinyTable. Used together, these products make it easy to start writing database applications without depending on any specific type of database. Shane
Hi Shane, Thanks for the reply :-) I'm not quite sure what your message meant... Is it okay to use TinyTables (as in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 aren't going to break them...)? What is DatabaseAPI? I've never heard of it :( Is TinyTables + based on TinyTables? Where I'm coming from with this is: TinyTables make a good place to store configuration data. I guess like PropertySheets, except they can hold a table-like property. Maybe Propertysheets need a TinyTable property type :-) TinyTables are used in Squishdot for this very purpose. I'm doign some development work on Squishdot and I want to know whether I need to replace TinyTables with something else to make it more future proof. Hope you can help, Chris
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Chris Withers wrote:
Is it okay to use TinyTables (as in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 aren't going to break them...)?
IMO yes. What they do they do it well and they are very simple to use. They are not meant for data that change frequently or for large datasets, but they fit well things like Squishdot configuration settings. Pavlos
Is it okay to use TinyTables (as in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 aren't going to break them...)?
IMO yes. What they do they do it well and they are very simple to use. They are not meant for data that change frequently or for large datasets, but they fit well things like Squishdot configuration settings.
Oh I totally agree. My question should have been 'are there any changes likely to happen in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 that will break TinyTables?' cheers, Chris
On Wed, 26 Apr 2000, Chris Withers wrote:
Oh I totally agree. My question should have been 'are there any changes likely to happen in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 that will break TinyTables?'
I went throught the source code long time ago and as far as I can remember there was no Zope specific code in the data storage part. I believe it was all persistent regular lists and dicts. Pavlos
Chris Withers wrote:
Is it okay to use TinyTables (as in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 aren't going to break them...)?
I think that's fine, and I doubt Zope 2.2 or 2.3 will break them; if they do, either TinyTables or Zope will be fixed by someone. :) [snip]
Where I'm coming from with this is:
TinyTables make a good place to store configuration data. I guess like PropertySheets, except they can hold a table-like property. Maybe Propertysheets need a TinyTable property type :-)
You're using them in the intended way, I think. Minor configuration stuff should go to properties or to a TinyTable, depending on if the data comes in a tabular form or not.
TinyTables are used in Squishdot for this very purpose. I'm doign some development work on Squishdot and I want to know whether I need to replace TinyTables with something else to make it more future proof.
I think TinyTables are fairly future proof. Something better will undoubtedly come along eventually; perhaps it's DatabaseAPI and TinyTables+, I haven't looked at these yet. Even so, it should be fairly straightforward to write some script that transforms any tinytable data into something else. Regards, Martijn
On 26 Apr 2000 11:10:01 -0500, Chris Withers wrote:
Is it okay to use TinyTables (as in Zope 2.2 or 2.3 aren't going to break them...)?
TinyTables uses pretty simple constructs that hopefully won't break in a future version of Zope. Can't imagine it would be a big task to fix if something does break.
TinyTables make a good place to store configuration data. I guess like PropertySheets, except they can hold a table-like property. Maybe Propertysheets need a TinyTable property type :-)
Almost two years ago I was petitioning DC to provide a small, searchable, tabular Principia (before Zope) data structure that could be used for just these sorts of things. Best I could figure, the DC folks just had a completely different world view on the topic. :^) (This was before we had The Source). The DC folks were certainly looking much further down the road than I was, but I just needed something simple and 'now'. Anyway, TinyTables came out of that need. One one hand, it was almost overkill for what I wanted, but Ty did such a good job with it that it became useful for lots of other applications and I most certainly didn't complain. I think it'd be great to have a more integrated (small) tabular data structure. What would it have that TinyTables doesn't provide? Both Ty and I have come up with additional capabilities to TinyTables, but it was then no longer *Tiny*...
I think it'd be great to have a more integrated (small) tabular data structure. What would it have that TinyTables doesn't provide? Both Ty and I have come up with additional capabilities to TinyTables, but it was then no longer *Tiny*...
I think TinyTables are great the way they are. How about a property sheet version though... I have no idea how this would work, it would just be nice to have a TinyTable effectively as the property of a folder, rather than as an object in the folder. Chris
participants (5)
-
Chris Withers -
kent＠tiamat.goathill.org -
Martijn Faassen -
Pavlos Christoforou -
Shane Hathaway