Thank you @Michael Black and @Doug Nebeker for your replies @Michael Black
>> I assume when you say "discrete" you actually mean "bracketed" as there are lots more than 10 heights and weights. Yes, I mean 'bracketed' or 'binned' data. >> I don't know what Excel has to do with this unless you programmed the whole thing in Excel already Excel would be an example of an external data file that would contain all the possible height/weight/group combinations. The program would read in the user-entered height and weight, access the external data file, and output the corresponding group. >> Is speed really a concern? This does sound like a fairly trivial >> programming effort in most any language. Speed would not be a concern with this scenario, which only has 100 different possible outcomes. But if I scaled it up to ~400,000 possible outcomes, then speed becomes an issue for me. >> Do you want a GUI around this too? No I don't need a GUI just yet. I'm just trying to ascertain whether a database solution to this problem would be advantageous, and I think you are saying yes, correct? @Doug Nebeker >> If you think you'll have many more than 10 entries (likes thousands or millions), or the 10 entries change very often (once a minute??) and you could automate entering them, a simple app using a database like SQLite would be a decent way to go. Yes I will have thousands of entries, and could probably automate entering at least some of them. >> Does this need to get put on a website? No. >> Is the app going to be mailed around? No. >> If you'd like to use this as an excuse to learn more about databases, this project would be a perfect opportunity. That's exactly what I'm doing :-) >> Compared to using Excel: >> processing speed - your app would almost certainly start up and run quicker >> than Excel What if Excel was already up and running (i.e. ignore the Excel's start up time). Would an SQLite solution still be faster, considering the aforementioned scale? On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Carl Gross <cagr...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > I'm an amateur programmer who has never worked with databases before. I > *think* that getting started with SQLite may help with some of my projects, > but I'm having trouble determining exactly how. I'm hoping someone in this > list may be able to point me in the right direction. > > My simplified situation is this. There are 10 discrete heights' and 10 > discrete weights,' and each height/weight combination corresponds to one of > two 'teams.' All of this information is hardcoded into my program. My > program asks a user to enter his own height and weight, and the program > will output the user's corresponding team based on the hardcoded data. > > My SQLite question is: Can using SQLite instead of Microsoft Excel be > beneficial in terms of coding efficiency, processing speed, memory usage, > or any other aspect? If so, how? > > Sorry for the long, broad, vague question. I'm not looking for someone to > tell me how to do something. I'm looking for someone to assure me that > SQLite (rather than a simple spreadsheet) is right for me, and to hopefully > steer me towards some documentation that may be beneficial to me. > > Thanks, > > Carl > _______________________________________________ sqlite-users mailing list sqlite-users@sqlite.org http://sqlite.org:8080/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
