[Zope] When to use a relational database

[quizzical]

Dieter Maurer wrote:
> 
> quizzical wrote at 2008-2-6 16:03 -0800:
>> ...
>>Apologies if this is a dumb question, I have had a good look through the
>>archives and on the web. My question is basically about how to design a
>>website. I really like the ease with which you can build applications in
>>zope but I often see comments implying that in order to scale well one may
>>want to use a backend relational datbase. I have also seen several
comments
>>to the effect that one should keep the state of a user session out of the
>>ZODB. 
>>
>>I am slightly confused by this, I can't find any information which would
>>help me decide what data would be better off in a relational database.
> 
> A relational database is good when you have large amounts
> of strictly structured data -- e.g. millions of user records
> where each user record has a fews fields with atomic datatypes.
> 
> The ZODB is good when you have weakly structured or unstructured data
> and your write rate is not too high.
> 
> The ZODB uses an almost self describing format. Therefore, it can
> store virtually everything, without any data model fixed beforehand.
> However, this leads to high redundancy and efficiency loss.
> This is not so problematic for unstructured or semi structured
> content -- as there is no much structure to exploit.
> It is also mot problematic for small amounts of data (then optimality
> is not an issue). But for large amounts of highly structured data,
> you can gain a lot with respect to space and time efficiency from
> a relational database.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dieter
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> 

Thanks everyone, thats cleared up my confusion and I can get on with
Zope-ing (can Zope be a verb) :)
Cheers

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