I'm working on a project that involves storing a somewhat "large" amount of data. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it.

Basically I will need to store a list like this:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...
---------------------------------> Roughly 1000 Digits, Comma Separated

These will be data points that I will reference to display something on a website, user generate values.

My question is, should I do one column with all 1000 numbers and commas, using Perl to split at the commas or use 1000 columns to store the data. (A lot of columns, doesn't sound like a good idea!)

However, every time the data is stored, which will be quite often, it will need to split or rejoin the data back together before inserting.

Is there a better way to go about thinking about this, is there a way to use an array or something like that for my data in mySQL.

Ultimately I want to program something in perl, using DBI and mySQL to store this data. It will be an interactive system for multiple users to be updating the data at once.

With that said, I'm trying to come up with a solution of either perl handling the mess, or giving the job to mySQL to handle the mess with what seems to be like a ridiculous amount of columns.

What do you guys think?

In reply to MySQL - Query vs Perl by Trihedralguy

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