Previously, I discussed the possibility of removing the database from EveHQ, and in its place, using cached data files. That aspect covers the static database, but what about the custom database that is used to store all the user data such as journals, prices and invention results? This still uses the same database format as the static data so could this be simplified?
I wanted to try and reduce the requirement for people to install and configure additional software when using EveHQ and so definitely did not want to go the route of full SQL, either MSSQL (including the Express version) or MySQL. Access was nice as the database was portable and pretty much worked for users out the box. The downside was maintenance of code and conversions required to run it. SQLCE was easier to maintain and also portable, but required an installation which some users have issues with. So, which to use?
With the static database probably on it’s way out from EveHQ usage, writing SQL queries to support two database formats will no longer be an issue. This opens the door to use other database systems not previously considered as part of version 2 development. One such system I am currently looking at is SQLite, which will require no installation, no configuration and the only pre-requisite will be a version of the .Net framework.
Just as a side note: last year during the development of version 2, I wrote about the speed of using SQLCE to bulk insert data into the flat file format. SQLCE was vastly superior to Access in terms of speed and having done some recent tests with SQLite, SQLite’s time for writing 100,000 records as clocked between 1.8 and 2.1s – over half as quick as SQLCE for the same transaction. It’s certainly looking promising!
