Thanks for the distinction between Storable and DBM::Deep. I guess I was thinking more in terms of what Storable does than an actual database, or specifically one that is accessed by multiple programs/users concurrently. I was looking at it as an easy way of storing complex data so it could be retrieved later, one piece at a time.

My observation on overhead wasn't just in terms of cpu but also the significant difference in file size. Will increasing the input data size from 36 K to 360 K result in a database size increase from 4 megs to 40 megs? But I assume there is an initial overhead that won't be changed much by an increase in number of records or an increase in record size.

Thanks for the information on perl databases. It's something I am going to have to dig deeper into.

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.