----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Bunce" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > > If you're always looking stuff up on simple ID numbers and
> > > "stuff" is a very simple data structure, then I doubt any DBMS can
> > > beat
> > >
> > > open D, "/data/1/12/123456" or ...
> > >
> > > from a fast local filesystem.
> >
> > Note that Theo Schlossnagel was saying over lunch at ApacheCon that if
> > your filename has more than 8 characters on Linux (ext2fs) it skips from
a
> > hashed algorithm to a linear algorithm (or something to that affect). So
> > go careful there. I don't have more details or a URL for any information
> > on this though.
>
> Similarly on Solaris (and perhaps most SysV derivatives) path component
> names longer than 16 chars (configurable) don't go into the inode
> lookup cache and so require a filesystem directory lookup.
If you are building a new system with this scheme, try ReiserFS on
a Linux box. It does not suffer from the usual problems when
you put a large number of files in one directory and is extremely
fast at lookups.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
