[Cialug] OT?: DBMs

[Stuart Thiessen]

Well, one issue here is that I am dealing with a client who has staff  
all over the world and they need to have access to organized data that  
includes video clips, images, and text. In some locations, they have  
good internet access and in others, they have very poor internet  
access if at all. Most of the data they need to see will be read-only.  
For those who have good internet access, they can probably access most  
of the information through the internet. Text and images could likely  
be shared over the internet with little difficulty either way. But  
there is alot of video data that they will want to view. So I approach  
I am considering is that the video data is distributed via DVD and  
physically located on each site in a specified location, but the  
database will contain the data they need to search the video and image  
data they have. They will also create new video and image data and the  
search data will need to be added to the database also. This is  
probably on the order of 1 video clip per week or so. Once the  
metadata is created, it is unlikely it will be changed. Data added  
will be unique to their specific sites.

An additional wrinkle is that they will not have any IT staff at any  
of the locations and they will not have the technical literacy to read  
the manual or google for help when they have questions. It is not  
realistic for them. If the contract work continues, my friend and I  
will be the only IT staff they will have to maintain and keep the  
database working. I wanted something that would be relatively easy to  
install and just use with a minimum amount of installation,  
maintenance, tweaking, etc. Ideally, it could be something that they  
can just install themselves without needing our presence there. The  
client does not have the resources to send us flying to each location  
to fix problems or tweak settings.

Clients will be a mix of Mac and Windows clients except for the server  
we set up to manage the metadata. It will be Linux. Each site will  
push their metadata to the server, and the server will push updates  
from all the sites back to each individual site.

Right now, I am trying to envision the best infrastructure so that it  
will meet their needs and not result in long-term frustration. The  
simplicity of DBMs was what made me interested in them. But if you  
have a better suggestion, that's why I am asking. :) I am concerned  
though that MySQL or PostgreSQL will add a layer of complexity that I  
will want to avoid?

Thanks,

Stuart

On 29 Oct 2007, at 11:57 , David Champion wrote:

> It depends a lot on what you're doing with it... the DBMS trade off a
> lot of features for read-only speed. The full SQL databases offer a  
> lot
> of other things that may (or may not) be important to you.
>
> -dc
>
> Stuart Thiessen wrote:
>> I am curious why?  It was my understanding that if you have equal  
>> parts
>> of reading and writing, then SQL databases were more recommended  
>> because
>> the speed of handling transactions both ways and handling multiple
>> writes from multiple sources. On the other hand, if you were dealing
>> with more reading and only occasional writing (usually from a managed
>> source) then a DBM or XML approach were better because the "increased
>> complexity" of SQL didn't provide additional benefits over DBM or  
>> XML.
>> The ability of DBM and XML to store the data like your application  
>> views
>> it provided a better benefit in terms of speed and processing than  
>> add
>> the necessary processing to convert your data between the  
>> application's
>> processing of it and the relational database structure. At least that
>> was what my reading so far has indicated.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Stuart
>>
>> On 29 Oct 2007, at 11:04 , Jeffrey C. Ollie wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 10:46 -0500, Stuart Thiessen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Also, I am curious if any of you have preferences about which DBM  
>>>> to
>>>> use? This particular application will be read-mostly and write-
>>>> occassionally, which as I understand is the strength of a DBM?  
>>>> Which
>>>> one would you recommend if I am using both python and PHP to  
>>>> connect
>>>> to that DBM and access the data? Currently, I plan to use python to
>>>> handle a standalone application access and PHP to provide a web- 
>>>> based
>>>> access.
>>>
>>> I'd recommend MySQL or PostgreSQL vs. trying to use a DBM library.
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>>
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