Thread: Does this still hold true?

Hi everyone,

Back in the "old" days, people always told me, manipulate files as little as possible! It is expensive and will slow down the application! Is this still true?

One of the things I'm working on right now involves a lot of saving, but I have a choice between saving to disk, or saving to a database (which, if you ask me, eventually will end up being saved to disk anyways). Am I right to assume that the "cost" to use either method is more or less the same, with the database incurring a bit more overhead because it needs to figure out where to write the data?

Or am I just archaic in thinking that this is still an issue?

Thanks,
April

I guess in essence, I'm trying to log a transaction system. They don't have to be 100% real time accurate (ie. if two people request for a resource at the same time, it's not important down to the milisecond which one was first), but keeping a log of these transactions in sequence is important. I'm expecting maybe 5000-10000 lines per user per four to five hour session, and maybe up to 20-50 concurrent users. I haven't decided whether to keep them separate for each user or have a separate file for each user, but there'll need to be daily archives, etc.