Flatfile vs. database

[Alan Garrison]

glowack2@key-largo.cl.msu.edu 03/08/00 05:24PM

> I'm trying to create a database (or database-like) collection of
> documents, and each document has associated keywords, categories, cross
> references, and creation/modification information (authors, date written,
> etc.).  

> In some sense, I guess this will be like an encyclopedia, with some
> entries being a few lines, others being large articles (like information
> on a whole country), plus images and sounds maybe?  I'd 
> like a fair amount
> of cross-referencing between articles, ala hyperlinks probably.  The
> viewing format will probably be web-based, but I'll want to edit the
> documents with a real editor (i.e. emacs) as opposed to a web textbox.

If you are a SQL fan, perhaps something like an object-relational
or object-oriented database?  You could define object types based
on document types, sound files, images, etc...  Hyperlinks might be
a little tricky though.  I suppose you could set up emacs to do 
direct editing of database fields (?).  Things like sound files 
could be stored as binary objects, perhaps with a mime type field
to indicate what the binary thing is.

> I need to be
> able to access it indefinately, so I don't want some obscure data format
> I'll be unable to read in 10 years.  

If you do use a SQL system, anything you put should be extractable
by either a dump facility, or just extract everything using a 
select statement.