Re: Where to start!

At 10:14 AM -0400 5/6/08, Andrew Ballard wrote:

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 9:21 AM, tedd <tedd.sperling@gmail.com> wrote: I will respectfully (though strongly) disagree here, tedd. If you are building a guest book and all you need is a place to "store and retrieve stuff," store it in a file rather than a database. If you only have one form to collect and store information, this will be more than sufficient. If you are doing something more complex where you need to relate information (say, for example, forum members <-> forum topics <-> forum messages, or customers <-> orders <-> items, etc.) then you are far better off to think about what you need to store and plan your database first. Doing that will make your data model much better from the start, and you can also start planning out what your HTML pages need to be collecting as it relates to how the data is stored. Andrew

Andrew: Well, you can certainly disagree -- we all do things differently. What works for me, doesn't work for you and vise versa -- but that's the way of things. I understand relational dB's and how to use them, but I don't think the OP was talking about that, but rather getting something much more simple up and running. Rob, who I respect greatly, said that 90 percent of what you are doing should be decided before you start programming. But, I never work that way either. I always jump right in and use the computer to design stuff. I never resort to making a story-book layout or poster board work-up or anything like that. I just don't work that way. Sure, people can criticize the way I do things if they want, but I still get things done that work and are usually under budget with respect to money and time -- so I must be doing something right. From my perspective, it's far better for a newbie to actually produce something than it is to get lost in the details and never see anything materialize. Besides, trial and error is a great way to learn. Oh, and I seldom use the file system for anything. MySQL works just fine for storing things. I'm even considering Stut's recommendation to use a dB rather than sessions -- I think there is real value there. In any event, different strokes for different folks -- happy coding. :-) Cheers, tedd -- ------- http://sperling.com http://ancientstones.com http://earthstones.com