On Sep 11, 2:40 am, Steven D'Aprano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:59:35 -0700, Aaron \"Castironpi\" Brady wrote: > > On Sep 10, 5:24 am, Steven D'Aprano > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:26:20 +0200, Fredrik Lundh wrote: > >> > Steven D'Aprano wrote: > > >> >> You've created a solution to a problem which (probably) only affects > >> >> a very small number of people, at least judging by your use-cases. > >> >> Who has a 4GB XML file > > >> > Getting 4GB XML files from, say, logging processes or databases that > >> > can render their output as XML is not that uncommon. They're usually > >> > record-oriented, and are intended to be processed as streams. And > >> > given the right tools, doing that is no harder than doing the same to > >> > a 4GB text file. > > >> Fair enough, that's a good point. > > >> But would you expect random access to a 4GB XML file? If I've > >> understood what Castironpi is trying for, his primary use case was for > >> people wanting exactly that. > > >> -- > >> Steven > > > Steven, > > > Are you claiming that sequential storage is sufficient for small amounts > > of data, and relational db.s are necessary for large amounts? > > I'm no longer *claiming* anything, I'm *asking* whether random access to > a 4GB XML file is something that is credible or useful. It is my > understanding that XML is particularly ill-suited to random access once > the amount of data is too large to fit in RAM. > > I'm interested in what Fredrik has to say about this, as he's the author > of ElementTree. > > -- > Steven
XML is the wrong word for the example I was thinking of (as was already pointed out in another thread). XML is by definition sequential. The use case pertained to a generic element hierarchy; think of 4GB of hierarchical data. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
