[Zope] [Q] Design decisions: the use of ZCatalogs versus a backend DB?

Darran Edmundson Darran.Edmundson@anu.edu.au
Mon, 24 Jan 2000 09:27:25 +1100


Toying with ZCatalogs, I am starting to wonder if
many of the uses I envisioned are not better served
with a backend database.  For example, for a publication
database where nearly all of the instance data needs to
be indexed (author, title, journal, year), this results
in near total duplication of the instance data within the 
catalog.  

It seems that ZCatalogs are meant to be used if (i) only 
a fraction of the instance data needs to be indexed, or 
(ii) the dataset is small enough that one can live with 
the duplication.

As another example, consider a catalog of URLs (descriptor,
link, creation_date) gleaned from a URLClass ZClass.  Here
we might have hundreds of URLClass instances peppered
throughout user folders and all of the data needs to be
indexed.  Is the overhead of object creation and duplication
within the catalog better served with a simple backend
database?

Darran.