Re: Thanks, naming conventions, and count()

> * Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> [010429 20:14] wrote:
> 
> > Yes, I like that idea, but the problem is that it is hard to update just
> > one table in the file.  You sort of have to update the entire file each
> > time a table changes.  That is why I liked symlinks because they are
> > per-table, but you are right that the symlink creation could fail
> > because the new table file was never created or something, leaving the
> > symlink pointing to nothing.  Not sure how to address this.  Is there a
> > way to update a flat file when a single table changes?
> 
> Sort of, if that flat file is in the form of:
> 123456;"tablename                   "
> 000033;"another_table               "
> 
> ie, each line is a fixed length.
> 

Yea, after I posted, I realized that using a fixed length line would
solve the problem.  The larger problem, though, I think, is concurrency.
Can multiple backends update that single flat file reliably?  I suppose
they could do append-only to the file, and you could grab the last
entry, but again, sometimes it is rolled back, so I think there has to
be a way to clean it up.

Of course, Tom or Vadim may come along and say this is a stupid idea,
and we would be done discussing it.  :-)

--  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610)
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