[Zope] Simple tabular data. Do I need SQL?

[Rob W. W. Hooft]

On my web site, I have made a "News" page. The "News" items themselves
are listed as a "lines"-property named "Items" on the News folder:

date1;text1
date2;text2
...

They are accessed in a dtml-method:

------------------------
<dtml-var standard_html_header>
<h2><dtml-var title></h2>
<DL>
<dtml-in Items>
<dtml-let lin="_.string.split(_['sequence-item'],';')"
          dat="lin[0]"
          txt="lin[1]">
<P>
<DT><dtml-var dat></DT>
<DD><dtml-var txt></DD>
</P>
</dtml-let>
</dtml-in>
</DL>
<dtml-var standard_html_footer>
-------------------------

Since this is a small listing, this is still manageable. But: I do find the
";"-delimited fields a bit hackish, so I'm looking for a better way to
handle this kind of very simple tabular data. 

Do I really have to go all the way to a proper relational database and
learn SQL? Or is there another way? If I do need to go with a real
database, do I have to pay attention to the "Demo Only" warnings in
GadFly?

Lots of questions from a python-loving-zope-newbie.....

Regards,

Rob Hooft.

-- 
=====   rob@hooft.net          http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/  =====
=====   R&D, Nonius BV, Delft  http://www.nonius.nl/             =====
===== PGPid 0xFA19277D ========================== Use Linux! =========