array info request

[J. Landman Gay]

Thomas McGrath III wrote:
> Pardon me butting in here but I have a question:
> Then what is the best use of arrays? What can/should they be used for?
> 
> I understand the use and need for a custom property and the need for 
> databases but what about these here arrays???

Actually, I used arrays exactly as the original poster suggested, and 
the application is working great, running the entire public school 
library for the Aborigines in the Australian Outback.

They are a small library system. For anything very much larger, I'd go 
with a dedicated database as Mark suggetss. But their library tops out 
at about 40,000 books right now, and even with room for many thousands 
more, I think using arrays is a fine solution.

Each library in the Outback has only a few thousand books. The master 
database in Darwin stores the titles for all of them combined, and keeps 
track of which school has what. In any case, the current library for 
both the schools and the master database is stored as a text file on 
disk, just a plain list with one book per line. This text file is read 
into memory when the app starts up, split into an array, and uses a 
single-card stack as a front end. When a book is accessed, the card 
fields are filled in from the array. It is very fast. Memory usage is 
minimal; the average school's text file is under 100K for a couple of 
thousand books.

Access to any one of 40,000 titles is instantaneous. Searching for 
strings is also very fast. Backing up the library is a simple matter of 
copying a text file to another volume. Text files compress very well, 
which means they can be quickly sent over the internet to another school 
(the Outback has very iffy electrical and internet access, so this was 
important.) Importing a list of new books is just a matter of reading in 
a new text list and adding it to the current array. It all works very 
well and very fast.

So I think the original idea is a fine use of arrays. ;)

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com