Xml or Sqlite, When to drop Xml for a Database? [closed]

Answer 1

If any time you will need to scale, use databases.

Answer 2

Don't forget that you have a great database at your fingertips: the filesystem!

Lots of programmers forget that a decent directory-file structure is/has:

1. It's fast as hell
2. It's portable
3. It has a tiny runtime footprint

People are talking about splitting up XML files into multiple XML files... I would consider splitting your XML into multiple directories and multiple plaintext files.

Give it a go. It's refreshingly fast.

Answer 3

I wouldn't use XML for storing RSS items. A feed reader makes constant updates as it receives data.

With XML, you need to load the data from file first, parse it, then store it for easy search/retrieval/update. Sounds like a database...

Also, what happens if your application crashes? if you use XML, what state is the data in the XML file versus the data in memory. At least with SQLite you get atomicity, so you are assured that your application will start with the same state as when the last database write was made.

Answer 4

XML can be stored as text and as a binary file format.

If your primary goal is to let a computer read / write a file format effeciently you should work with a binary file format.

Databases are an easy to use way of storing and maintaining data. They are not the fastest way to store data that is a binary file format.

What can speed things up is using an in memory database / database type. Sqlite has this option.

And this sounds like the best way to do it for you.

Answer 5

If your searching go with a db. You could split the xml files up into directories to ease seeking, but the managerial overhead easily gets quite heavy. You also get a lot more than just performance with a sql db...

Answer 6

I say it's not a matter of data size, but of data type. If your data is structured, use a relational database. If your data is semi-structured, use XML or - if the data amounts really grow too large - an XML database.