You're worried about using more than 2GB of hard drive space?

Of course not. How did you arrive at that question?

The point is, to process the data, it has to be read from disc regardless of whether it is read directly or through a DB. But to process it through the DB, it has first to be read (from the flat files), then written (to the DB files and indexes), then re-read (from/via the DB and indexes).

Sure, if the data is structured and can be indexed in a manner that aids the query, then the final re-read may entail reading less data than the original read--but it is still duplicated or triplicated effort unless there is a known future benefit from having it stored.

And, in an IO-bound process, all that extra IO does nothing to facilitate performance improvements through the use of parallelization. One of tilly's cited benefits.

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^4: Algorithm advice sought for seaching through GB's of text (email) files by BrowserUk
in thread Algorithm advice sought for seaching through GB's of text (email) files by chargrill

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.