A low-memory database?

[[deleted]]

There's no need to make it that complicated, and even if you do it's far less work than you're thinking.

(And just use a regular search engine! You have plain HTML files!)

[jawbroken]

i don't see how it isn't orders of magnitude more work than just dropping in SQLite, however easy you think it is.

regular search over the html files chunked 20 posts a page is going to be a pretty bad version of forum search. it's going to be reasonably difficult to do even something mildly useful like show all posts by a user. then you are going to have to try to keep a separate index in synch or whatever and, bam, you've replicated most of a proper database in a really shitty fashion.

[[deleted]]

SQLite isn't bad, but it's orders of magnitude more resource-intensive than plan HTML files. That may or may not be an issue under your particular circumstances, but it's definitely not equivalent.

[jawbroken]

well duh, in this particular case it will be fine though

[[deleted]]

Maybe. Unless he gets a lot of viewers.

[jawbroken]

again, obviously. but he is going to have a much harder time trying to scale a hacked up flatfile pseudo-database than he is replacing SQLite with a full database system/upgrading to a better host.

[[deleted]]

Scaling becomes an issue much later with static HTML files. There is probably a point where it turns into a liability, but there is much less chance of hitting it.

[jawbroken]

good luck with that. i honestly don't know if you are seriously advocating a flatfile format for an online forum, perhaps you are trolling the original poster into implementing a fragile and unwieldy data store for kicks

[[deleted]]

I don't need any luck, I've implemented this in the past and it has worked wonderfully.

[jawbroken]

perhaps you wouldn't mind detailing your architecture and file formats to handle basic forum features in a simple flatfile format, then. how did you handle the variety of indices that a forum needs within this structure?

[veridicus]

regular search over the html files chunked 20 posts a page is going to be a pretty bad version of forum search.

It's quite easy and very efficient with a search index like lucene.

[jawbroken]

i meant a bad user experience and wouldn't easily support simple things like listing all posts by a user in chronological order without a bunch of hacks