On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 17:20:53 -0800, Shel wrote: > Sorry I wasn't clear about the db part. Most of the data has already > been written and/or generated and tested with the code. I do plan to > finish all the database stuff before going to the front end, but am just > thinking ahead about how to do the interface. > That sounds good. Sorry if I was repeating stuff you already know, but it wasn't obvious what you knew about care & feeding of an RDBMS. I'll just add two comments on databases: - Decompose the database design to 3NF form and make sure all prime and foreign keys have indexes. This is stuff that previous experience shows self-taught Access users don't do. Not doing it will bite you hard on performance as soon as the tables exceed a few rows in size. Fixing it later can force major changes to the programs as well.
- If you haven't looked at it yet, find out about the EXPLAIN verb and what its output means. Use it on all queries that your online program issues and take notice of how rearranging the query and/or adding/changing indexes affects the cost of the query. Lower cost queries mean higher performance and hence faster response times. What I meant to add last night is that, if your application is to be used by more than a single user at a time a prime consideration is how you will recognise input received from each user and how you'll store their context between interactions with them in the same session and keep each session's context separate. The web server doesn't do this, so this managing session context is the application's responsibility. Common methods are to use a session cookie and/or to store session context in the database. -- martin@ | Martin Gregorie gregorie. | Essex, UK org | -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list