Flat files have the advantage of being easily accessible. Just start an editor and you can see and edit everything. But why use a database then? A database allows fast access to selected subsets of structured data (i.e. data you can put into rows and columns and every row has a similar item in a specific column)

But where is the structure of a hash or array you dumped with Data::Dumper? It is just one long string that you can store in a column of this table and read out one piece or write in one piece. Normally that can be done with a flat file faster and better.

So the question is, what do you hope to achieve better with a database than with flat files ?

It might be that many of the arrays are shared between different config files. Then Data::Dumper or YAML might make sense.

Or you need insertion or reordering inside the arrays a lot. Or maybe you are after statistical data. In those cases you would have to store each array element in a row of the database. Might make sense, but a bit far fetched.

As you can see I have a hard time finding reasons why a config file should be stored in a database. If you have a convincing reason we could tell you how to do it elegantly

In reply to Re: Configuration Storage (Perl Vars) in Database by jethro
in thread Configuration Storage (Perl Vars) in Database by openadmin

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.