I recently threw together a rather Slashdot'ish site (http://www.omninerd.com/) and I used XML text files with PHP (and XSLT) over the mySQL alternative. Now, I'm no DB expert, but is there really any need for most sites to be DB driven? For example, on my site, there are articles, and the news posts that introduce these articles that readers can comment on. Perhaps I'm missing the big picture, but why would I need a DB solution when XML files get the job done, are easily portable, and can be accessed without the use of a DB program.
I understand for extremely large data sets a DB is probably what you want, but what about small timers like me? Is a DB solution a waste of my time, or am I missing something big?
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I recently threw together a rather Slashdot'ish site (http://www.omninerd.com/) and I used XML text files with PHP (and XSLT) over the mySQL alternative. Now, I'm no DB expert, but is there really any need for most sites to be DB driven? For example, on my site, there are articles, and the news posts that introduce these articles that readers can comment on. Perhaps I'm missing the big picture, but why would I need a DB solution when XML files get the job done, are easily portable, and can be accessed without the use of a DB program. I understand for extremely large data sets a DB is probably what you want, but what about small timers like me? Is a DB solution a waste of my time, or am I missing something big?