Re: persistent data feature

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>> If we provide a feature for storing persistent Lisp data, I contend
>>> that the default option should be to store it in a purely textual file.
>>>
>>> Many users will not store large amounts of data, and a textual file
>>> would be much less risk-prone than any other method.
>>
>> There will, of course, be large amounts of data, and that will be slow.
>> (People already do this with a number things, and the results are
>> predictably sluggish.)
>
> To help me understand this discussion, I think it would help me to have
> examples of such large databases currently implemented as text files,
> along with an idea of what "large" means in this context (how many MBs)
> and where the "slow"ness manifests itself.

FWIW I would also provide a sqlite backend for EBDB (contact
management). Not because the eieio-persistent text files are large (my
3200 contacts take up 1.5M), but because I'd like to let users make use
of that data in other, non-Emacs applications. I would also be looking
at a usage pattern that does not slurp the whole database into memory at
startup. Probably it would build some minimal caches at startup, and
then access the database for reads and writes as necessary.