[Zope] audio order

[Terry Hancock]

On Friday 21 May 2004 01:04 am, Aaron wrote:
> Would I use the zope db to keep track of the audio or a relational db?
> 
> My question Is generally more generic, what advantage does zope give me
> over another solution.
> 
> The streaming issue is secondary for me as is at this time bandwidth.
> I will have hundreds of recording that will need to be maintained,
> searched, edited, listened to etc.
> 
> I am trying to see how zope will help me do this.

It really depends on how you want to use the data. If it is mostly
a table of read-mostly information that you want to refer to, and if the
number of records is going to be very large (like the electronic card
catalog at a library, for example), then I would go with the RDBM
approach. This has some overhead in Zope, but it's probably worth it
for a couple of different reasons.

There's also the point that RDBM are optimized for having no intrinsic
structure, and applying the structure at query time (i.e. searches which
may be on any combination of fields).

OTOH, if the data is more object-like, you want to read/write more often,
need to have variable meta-data associated with it, need relatively few
(a few hundred might be relatively few) objects, or a natural hierarchical
structure (e.g. like a filesystem) is a better model for you, then I think
you might want to use the ZODB.

My first guess would be "use the ZODB until you prove you need the RDBM".
The only reason to go straight to the RDBM is for cases where you know
in advance that you're going to be dealing with scads of records and/or
you want more separability from Zope.

You should think of Zope as primarily being the *application* framework,
rather than focusing on storage of the data objects themselves.  Using
the ZODB is a much more convenient solution for modest sized collections
of data, but you may want a dedicated database if you have large amounts
of non-hierarchical data.

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com