I have a general question about the Profiles feature described in Chapter 17. I certainly understand the usage of the Profiles as described in the context of the Planet Wrox example... but I wasn't certain it would be a good idea to use in the case I describe below.

Imagine I'm setting up a web-site for a chess server. Each user has a "profile" in the sense of the chapter. Their name, maybe their favorite openings, their chess rating, etc.

Now imagine they also have one or more chess games that are currently in progress with other users. Should THAT information be also stored in their profile? Or would it be better to have a different database table for that purpose?

I'm sure there are multiple ways this can be done, but I was curious what you think would be the better approach.

Thanks!

Hi there,

I would not store that data in profile, but in separate tables instead (optionally in the same or in a different database). You need to be able to query for this data, and also for users other than the current (give me the games that user X is currently participating in) and profile, because of the way it stores the data in the database, makes this very hard.

I would use Profile only for simple user-specific data like a preferred news category.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
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Thanks for your reply.

That was the conclusion I arrived at as well after I saw that the profile is all stored in a giant XML file embedded in the database.