[Gnump3d-devel] Backend Database

[gnump3spam]

In the archive there is a message from back in 2004 where someone was 
suggesting a database backend.  Steve raised some valid concerns about why he 
did not want to use it.  However it may be time to reconsider it.  I personally 
have over 30,000+ titles in my library and gnump3d can get pretty slow, like 45 
seconds to load a page and a dual processor machine with 4-GBytes of memory 
(there is a normal baseline load on the server).  

In the 2004 discussion they talked about the cache system that is currently 
being used or dumping it entirely and going to a database.  They discussed a 
number of issues such as sync, requiring people to have a database on the 
system, older machines would not be able to run gnump3d etc..  

I have two suggestions and would love to hear from other people.

Suggestion 1: Have support for an optional database.  However, if the user did 
not want to use the database he could default to the current cache system.  
This would resolve all the limitations that would be imposed by forcing the 
user to use a database.

Suggestion 2: Another option is to convert everything over to a database system 
but allow the user to use a flat file as a database.  DBI supports this.  This 
would allow the code to have a single interface using the DBI module.  The 
issue of how to support all the databases then becomes a trivial task of 
setting up various DBI->connect strings for the different databases.  It also 
solves the issues regarding sync between the cache and database (as there is no 
cache).  Also the issues related to requiring people to have a database are no 
longer valid as a system requirements for using a flat file database does not 
require any software to be installed other then the standard Perl DBI.

Personally, I think #2 is a much better suggestion.  What are your thoughts?

Cheers
John Peach