Deeply nested dictionaries - should I look into a database or am I just doing it wrong?

[Thorsten Kampe]

* Andrew Berg (Sat, 30 Jul 2011 22:10:43 -0500)
> I'm looking for pointers on design. I'm inexperienced but cautious and
> am mostly wondering if there's an easier way to "format" this data or
> if this approach will lead to problems.

The "QueueItem.x264['avs']['filter']['fft3d']['ffte'])" example does not 
look right. Especially the mix of "." and "[]" references. Actually, 
dictionaries in a dictionary don't look right to me either.

The design of your data structure won't change. I would think that your 
program already mimicks it by nested class statements so you're 
duplicating the already existing class structure via dictionaries in 
order to have it available in the main class. You say that is necessary 
but I'm not convinced it is.

Another approach would be named tuples instead of dictionaries or flat 
SQL tables.

Thorsten