[Zope] should files be stored in RDBs?

[Thomas B. Passin]

[Charlie Fulton]

> There will be metadata (what equipment was used, what settings were, who
did
> it, etc) which needs to be searchable and is appropriate for a relational
> database.  Now what to do with the data itself?  File names are similar
and
> I'd probably have to hash the timestamp or something in order to guarantee
> that they're not the same in a directory, making it essentially
meaningless
> without the database.  Plus they're small and the hierarchy could get ugly
> in a hurry.
>
> So I thought I might go ahead and store them as records in the database.
It
> seemed simple in principal and more intuitive since whoever inherits this
> system will likely not be a professional IT person.  Just as I am not one.
>
>

At this point, I'd say to store the meta data in a relational database
rather than the ZODB.  This will give you much more flexibility in querying
it later on.  I'm also inclined to say just store the data files in the file
system.  A drawback of this is that you would need a program besides the
database to get them, but if you will use Zope anyway, that's taken care of.

Cheers,

Tom P