Re: when to use a DB

podian_at_yahoo.com (siva chelliah) wrote in message news:<5d146344.0203061320.477b78f4_at_posting.google.com>...
> When you start a project, sometime you discuss if we need a DB or not
> for that project.
>
> What are the guidelines on when to use and when not to use a database
> for your projcet?
>
> I do not want to use a DB and incur un-necessary overhead. So I want
> to make sure I really need a DB in our current project we are just
> starting to design.

The PRIMARY reason for using a database is data integrity. If you build an app to store your data, how are you gonna be sure the data people put into it is coherent and useful over time.

I can't count the number of times I've been called on to clean up data that was messed up mainly because there were no constraints put on the data being put into a system. A properly designed and normalized database will greatly reduce the cost of maintenance of your data over time.

Basically, without a well designed database schema to hold your data, it may well become worse than useless over time due to human error. Received on Thu Mar 07 2002 - 23:23:28 CET