According to what you are all saying, I probably will stick with getting it strait from the database. The other way I mentioned seems like it might actually be simpler, but I don't really know.

Preformence isn't really much of a concern for me. I was wondering also about which would be a better way to write my perl scripts. Here's some basic psuedo-code of what I have, and what I was thinking.

Current Process:
The view function of the script is called whenever the user visits the page.
The add/change data function of the script is only used by me.

view function {

  connect_to_databse;

  get_data;
  format_data;
  print;

  disconnect_from_databsse;

} end view function


add (or change) data function  {

  get_submitted_data_from_form;

  connect_to_database;
  insert_data; (change_data;)
  disconnect_from_database;

}
[download]

Possible replacement:
The entire script is only used by me, and the formatted txt file is grabbed by the user.

add/change data function {

  get_submitted_data;

  connect_to_database;
  change_data;

  get_all_data;
  format_data;
  save_in_txt_file;

  disconnect_from_database;

}
[download]

Final suggestions?