[Sugar-devel] Question: Which database to use best from within sugar?

[Johannes Ponader]

Hi Sascha,

thanks for your answer.

The activity will help pupils to train their knowledge, for example
vocabulary, using a modified Leitner System (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system), like in many flashcard
programs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flashcard_Software).

Within the database, I'd like to store information about all the
flashcard-questions one ore more pupils are training:

For each pupil and flashcard, I want so store e.g.

1. Time of last revision of a flashcard/and or time of next scheduled
revision.
2. Level of training for that card.
3. Direction of training it has been asked the last time (eg. English-German
or German-English)
...

So most of the database operations will be selects (to find the flashcards
to be trained, or to compare the training level of a single flashcard for
different pupils) and updates (to update the stored parameters for a
flashcard/pupil-combination).

When the pupil(s) is/are training on several locations, the data must be
synchronized between the locations and/or be stored centrally at a place
that can be accessed from every location the pupils are training on.

JSON seems to rather be a data-interchange format than a database system?

>Start with something you either already know well (including the
>limitations and bugs) or is mature and understood by someone you can ask.

I thank you especially for this advice - I like it very much. I always tend
to use too many new technologies and end up frustrated by fixing bugs in my
dependencies..

Johannes.


2010/5/27 Sascha Silbe <sascha-ml-ui-sugar-devel at silbe.org>

> Excerpts from Johannes Ponader's message of Thu May 27 18:52:18 +0000 2010:
>
> > I'm working on a vocabulary/maths/knowlegde training activity, first
> > releases under http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/honeypot
> >
> > Now I want to store user data inside a database and have to make a
> decision
> > which database I should use.
> >
> > Would you be so kind to share your advice/experiences? Is there any
> > "standard" so far?
> There are about as many "standards" as there are different programs. ;)
> As always, it depends on what exactly you'd like to do. For a start I can
> recommend JSON (used by several activities, with a little trick it will
> work both on the original/old OLPC builds and recent systems) and sqlite3
> (included with Python 2.5+, so it should be available on any build shipping
> Sugar 0.84+).
>
> > If you don't come up with some other ideas, I would tend to use buzhug (
> > http://buzhug.sourceforge.net/), as it's stated to be fast, pure-Python
> and
> > intuitive.
> Looks nice and since it's pure Python you could just include it in the
> bundle, no dependency issues. But I'd be wary of using a lot of new
> technologies: you might end up failing just because there are too many
> bugs in parts you rely on. Even Xapian, something I'd call reasonably
> mature, has bugs that stalled my version support work (and thus my
> thesis) considerably.
> Start with something you either already know well (including the
> limitations and bugs) or is mature and understood by someone you can ask.
>
> If you elaborate on what exactly you're trying to achive - including
> where and when you'd like to store/retrieve what and how (your activity
> description is very vague), we might be able to provide some more
> specific advice.
>
> Sascha
> --
> http://sascha.silbe.org/
> http://www.infra-silbe.de/
>
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>


-- 
Johannes Ponader
0162/94 64 94 0
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