Re: sqlite3

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:
>
>> I suggested hashmap serialzied to/from file. I used such approach
>> myself for key-value pairs. It worked fine for me, it was quite simple
>> to read/write it. Currently I am testing a thing, and I use just assoc
>> list to read/write it to a file, and it works fine for me too.
>
> I think the ideal choice would either be dbm (and the GNU variant, gdbm,
> which improves upon it in every area) or recutils.
>
> Which still raises the other important question of how to serialize
> data, and how to do it better than `read' and `print'.
>
>> Just because everyone uses sqlite is maybe not the best argument, but
>> anyway, sqlite is maybe faster when serializing that reading/writing
>> lisp objects.  I don't know, I am not familiar so much with elisp vs
>> sqlite. Also, there are many uses for relational databse than just
>> persisting user settings.  I am thinking of desktop applications a lá
>> Access/Excel and similar.
>
> What is special about the settings of MS Access or MS Excel that warrant
> a relational database for storing them?

It is nothing about settings of neither of those. That is not why people use
those applications. They are used to take in and analyze data, collect
research etc.

People use those to create entire applications and to automate office works in
offices, research etc.

Reasons why they choose MS Office varies, but the most important are: economics,
familiarity and ease of use.

For the economics: if you have a big organization, several thousand people,
getting in a new application into the organization can be quite difficult and
costly. In a regional hospital I did some consulting for, anything had to go
through a gigantic IT system with lots of people who all has something important
to say when a decision is made. However, an access db file is just a document,
and MS Office is already used and licensed, so it is very handy to use. I
suggested for one project to replace their research db with sqlite and I
promised to build functionally same gui with TCL, but it was out of question to
install tcl runtime.

The other problem iss familiarity. When you have a personell, in ther
late years, being working there for like 20, 30, 40 years; they are not so very
welcomming to any changes, new tools etc. Adding even a simple button to press
to print out bunch of post addresses on label stickers can be challenging and
need thorough introduction. They simply forgett it was there at all, or where it is,
they have to write a paper how to open the document and lots of such
stuff. Replacing entire application in such system with something else means a
lots of eduction on work hours, hiring consults to held courses etc, so it is
not something big organizations like. 

Also economists love their Excell; I have seen lots of in-house and custom build
tools for analyzing data, repporting, etc. They don't care much about what
technology is used as long as they can do it in Excell because they don't have
time to learn some computer application (or don't care), they don't care about
licensing, software freedom issues etc. Those I have met live just in
completely, completely different world then we, when it comes to computing and
what technology they use.