Loading ...One of the worst programming decisions i’ve ever seen was to use 16000+ flat files for currency conversion in a PHP/MYSQL database. When i quizzed the designer about the design their response was that it was fast and databases are slow.
If you believe this then your education was a waste of time or you simply know nothing about databases. How can i say this you ask? Google is a database! Imagine how many pages they have now and how quicky it works. Flat files would not do it.
Databases have enjoyed a lot of development over the years. As a result they are fast and as such you should embrace their technology. Flat files are not the answer, ever! If you are searching for anything, then put the information into a database.
Indexes are a method for improving speed. I recently forgot to add an index to a table and my website went AWOL for about 45 minutes. With the correct indexes in place the query took less that 0.5 seconds. Indexes organise a snapshop of your table so that the database search engine doesent have to read through all the text.