[Mldonkey-users] MySQL

[Nikolai Prokoschenko]

Hello!

Well, I know it's a -users list, but anyway.... This thread appeared on
http://mldonkey.berlios.de/ a couple of days ago:

http://mldonkey.berlios.de/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=600

It deals with storing much of MLDonkey's persistent data in a MySQL
database (a patch was attached). I'd like to forward that discussion to
this list and also express my opinion.

All in all, I think it's a good idea, for the following reasons:

1. I guess, most people already have an SQL-Server installed - I do :)
Even if not, I don't think that MySQL is _that_ big and resource-hungry.
People are already running MLDonkey, which is (at the moment) also very
"hungry", so nothing to complain about.

2. I'd like almost everything to be stored in a database - not only the
persistent data. Why? Quite easy: a database is optimized. Smart people
have programmed data-storage algorithms for years. Every text-file is a
nightmare compared to it - slow and ineffective. My ~/.mldonkey has about
1Mb of such text-files - database would be much faster.

3. All the cruft concerning reading and writing files can be discarded. If
the necessary data is just written to the database (on the fly, as soon as
it arrives), there is no need for much memory and no need to write
temporary files just in case mldonkey crashes.

4. It will be much easier for GUIs to get the data. The telnet interface
could be slimmed up this way, stats won't have to be parsed out of telnet
responses (which is a pain in the neck, as I see it), discussions like
"'cs' vs. 'client_stats'" won't be necessary anymore. 

So these are my points, apart from the GoodIdea(tm)-feeling. I hope we'll
have a nice discussion :)

Nikolai.