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

[Tony McDonald]

At 12:01 pm +0200 15/6/00, Rob W. W. Hooft wrote:
>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?

I'd use TinyTable http://www.zope.org/Members/tsarna/TinyTable

It's lightweight and functional. No SQL queries as such, but things like
<dtml-in items>
</dtml-in>

and
<dtml-in "items(key='value')">
</dtml-in>

work fine.
Shane Hathaway has a product called 'TinyTable plus' 
http://www.zope.org/Members/hathawsh/TinyTablePlus that allows 
updates of the original TinyTable data.

Tone.
------
Dr Tony McDonald,  FMCC, Networked Learning Environments Project 
http://nle.ncl.ac.uk/
The Medical School, Newcastle University Tel: +44 191 222 5888
Fingerprint: 3450 876D FA41 B926 D3DD  F8C3 F2D0 C3B9 8B38 18A2