[IPython-dev] History
Robert Kern
robert.kern at gmail.com
Fri Feb 18 12:11:49 EST 2011
On 2/18/11 9:48 AM, Fernando Perez wrote:
> Finally, but importantly, I'm somewhat reluctant to go to sqlite until
> we've fully shown that accomplishing our design goals is
> hard/impossible with a simple json persisted data structure. While
> sqlite is indeed lightweight and available to us, it's also a more
> complex api to program against than simply storing a list/dict on
> disk. I'm OK accepting that complexity price *if we need it*, but I'm
> not convinced we do yet. Specifically, we need to answer: what is
> precisely the functionality that we want, that is hard/impossible to
> implement on json and easy/possible with sqlite?
Well, if the computation resources devoted to translating raw input to their
executable form is important, then I suspect the serialization to JSON of the
whole history every time it gets saved would often dominate it (translation
happens rarely; loading/saving happens often).
SQLite is safer.
SQLite allows concurrency.
SQLite allows us to store absolutely everything we have ever typed, but only
load what we want to use in a session.
SQLite is more easily extended to also record outputs. You get a basic notebook
format practically for free! :-)
--
Robert Kern
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
an underlying truth."
-- Umberto Eco
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