hattmoward made the very point I was going to make - how are you going to connect to your database?

There's an additional point, too. How can you trust that the configuration data in your database is unchanged? Most (nearly all) schemas don't audit themselves. This means that data can be changed and, short of a DBA going back through the redo logs, you would have no chance of detecting that. (And, frankly, very little chance at that, given the size and inscrutability of most redo logs.)

However, you can detect changes to a configuration file comparison with your source control. Thus, you can do something like cvs diff -r last_version_to_be_released config.ini and be sure nothing has changed. (Well, someone could mess with your CVS revisions, but that would require hacking root. After that, why would they stop at your CVS?)

If you're looking for a good config-file module, I'd take a look at Config::ApacheFormat. I'm using it right now in a production environment and it works great.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

I shouldn't have to say this, but any code, unless otherwise stated, is untested

In reply to Re: Storing config data - RDBMS vs File? by dragonchild
in thread Storing config data - RDBMS vs File? by Seumas

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