[CS-FSLUG] Church Management Software

[Micah Yoder]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 8:16 PM, Robert Wohlfarth <rbwohlfarth at gmail.com> wrote:

>  A lot of churches - especially the ones looking for free (cost)
>  software - have modest amounts of active data. I'm not sure if
>  performance is that much of a problem.
>
>  A database adds complexity. It must be managed, supported, etc... The
>  cost, in this case, isn't money. Volunteers face a steeper learning
>  curve.

Have you really used a database? Not to sound sarcastic but with those
arguments it doesn't sound like you really understand what they're all
about.  Storing structured relational data in text files just isn't a
good idea.  I don't even believe it would be easier in any way.  Code
to parse and re-write the files would certainly be more than the
couple lines it takes to do an SQL query.

>  Which issue would cause the most frustration for a user? Waiting an
>  extra five seconds once a week, or spending 40 hours repairing
>  corrupted binary data followed by another 20 hours catching up on
>  halted work?

PostgreSQL and SQLite are both ACID compliant, guaranteeing data
consistency.  No text file can come close to that.