Hello!

I'm making a forums poll!
Basically I need three tables:

Forums_Polls <PollID | Addeddate... | Question>
Forums_Polls_Choices <ChoiceID, Priority, PollID>
Forums_Polls_Votes <PollID | Membername | Vote>

Why do I need the Forums_Polls_Votes table?
Because I need to know if some user already voted on current Poll.
If he voted then I show him the results, else, I show him the checkboxs for he vote!

But I'm concerned about my future here... If I have 20 polls, and 500 members (+/-) placed a vote on each poll, I'll have (20x500) records in a few days on Forums_Polls_Votes table...

I'm thinking on xml extension, just for save Forums_Polls_Votes
For poll 27 I'll have poll27.xml
If I delete one poll, only delete one file.

The xml would be:
....
<pollVote membername="maxxim" vote="7">
....

I only need to add more nodes. I don't need to update existent votes!

With this I decrease a lot my database size!

My question:
It's efficient? fast?

I'll wait some testimonials...

max,

i think no matter what, you'll have better resource usage and cpu efficiency if you use sqlserver. i know for sure that reading files from disk is much more intensive than reading databse info. of course, you could cache the info but of course, you'd do this in the DAL anyway in 'conventional' db usage.

i don't think i can offer support to your thoughts here as you'll be battling with an unknown resource - file size. it really could just get so big that you'd fill available shared memory just loading the 'latest' xml file. my advice, if you've got a seperate sqlserver instance, use it as it'll be almost certainly on a seperate cpu, therefore you'll be psuedo multitasking.

tough one tho, given the simplicity of xml. but for 'globally' updateable data, xml isn't a great choice as it certainly will tie up your local rsource usage which in turn means all other 'web' access to your site.

jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

Jimi, thanks for your opinio!

It's that I need to Know: How does aspenet add more nodes to an xml file?

If (aspnet retrieve all nodes, add a new node and then re-save all nodes) then it is bad
If (aspnet DON'T retrieve all nodes, and just add one node to the end of xml) then it is good

I really don't know if it's really so bad because I'll have one xml file for poll, and I can get the dataset (the DS will only have 2 columns) make the poll Counts and then dispose dataset!

One of the many advantages of xml is the fastness of reading!

I'm considering this possibility because I only have 2 databases with 200 Mb each.

I posted this doubt on wrox asp.net forum but don't had any hawsers until now!

Thanks one more time for your opinion!

max,

the bad news is that xml files are treated like any sequencial file and to append, the entire file must be opened. the only 'win' you'd get would be if you were caching the file object (which incidently, i do with xml) and were doing many reads without writes to the file. this unfortunately is how discreet file access works. of course, you could create a virtual xml objectsource which then would allow for appending only the last item but this too would need to be managed and ultimately saved at some point.

i'm still thinking 'sqlserver'... but then again, debates like this bring lots of new methods to the surface, so never say never!!

jimi

http://www.originaltalent.com

thanks one more time Jimi! This is true!

I like more sql. I only used xml when I work with Flash!

I'll wait the opinion from the other side: XML defender ! :)

Chalk up my vote for SQL too :) I really would think the amount of data would not be significant. 10,000 rows is nothing really, and judging by the purpose, your tables would be rather narrow (i.e not making up for too much data each).

If your site gets that popular, I'm sure you'll be able to either get some donations or leverage some google-ads to ensure you can get either more databaseisze, or an extra database ;)

http://entropia-online.blogspot.com/