Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: It's just storage
Author: Rafe Colburn Posted: 5/16/1999; 9:22:08 PM Topic: Source release of Prefs.UserLand.Com Msg #: 6337 (In response to 6332) Prev/Next: 6336 / 6338
Most applications on the Mac and Unix already store user preferences on the file system, and that was the case on Windows as well, until Microsoft unleashed the miserable registry on the world.It seems like a good idea to package these prefs in XML files instead of in some proprietary format, and it shouldn't affect performance since it's just a new format for the old data, right?
I don't think it's a good idea to store all of the user prefs for a busy Web site in a flat file, XML or otherwise. It just makes more sense to me to throw them into a database of some kind. Storing OS prefs in flat files makes sense to me from a simplicity standpoint. When you have all the prefs in a database (like the Registry), you end up creating a single point of failure for your entire operating system right there. On the other hand, if you munge the text file that holds your Netscape prefs, it doesn't keep your computer from rebooting or whatever.
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