This is sort of a random question but I am building a backend in express and mongodb and I need to store data for a settings page. This would contain random one-off global settings an admin user would input to use. However, it needs to be saved in the DB so it is constant across all users.
Right now I have a single collection/table that just has one record stored and I just updated that specific record whenever the settings are updated.
Just feels a little goofy to do that a create a full schema and collection for one piece of data but I can't think of any other way to do it. Is this the normal way of doing this?
Thanks
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When we develop a web site, we will use the constant values, e.g. the states, cities and the counties, another example is the classifications of blogs. Suppose all these values are constant and we won't change them. The question is how do we store them?
I used to store them in the table of database and now I'm wondering if I can store them in the .json file that will easy to get to show in the front page.
Can anyone give me a routine way to deal with this circumstance?
Aleks is right that generally the best place is in the database.
You can store them as flat files if they really never change, but it's best to keep everything together in one place.
As a note, I would look into loading the data into a Singleton so you don't always have to make calls to the database.
The routine way would be:
Store in database
Make one call to database per structure
Keep copy of the one call in memory in your application
Refresh as needed
My wife works for a medium sized retail chain. Managers from each of the 80 outlets have to fill in one row of performance info for each of their staff (900 in all), but aren't allowed to see the data of other stores' staff.
My wife currently manages this with lots of spreadsheets, because each month the executive change what they want to collect, and their IT team don't have the resources to update their SAS system. She has to manually compile all the data into 1 spreadsheet for analysis which is time consuming and error prone. She's recently gone from having to do this for 20 outlets to 80 outlets and thinks she must be an easier way.
Is there a simple form based system, that can leverage what is already installed (microsoft office and lotus but not MSAccess), or can be run from a network drive. Cloud apps are banned. Excel's security is all wrong. Can word form templates append to a shared data source? Any ideas?
TIA
You could have a single table with all the data, then create 'shadowtables' on this table for each individual store.
in MySQL this would probably be either a 'partition table' (I've never used this so not sure how it works) or the use of temp tables.
You would then need to implement a method whereby when a user logs in at a given location (IP address) a trigger would create the temp table, then populate it with the relevent data for the store at that IP address.
An alternative (probably easier too) would be to have a specied table for each store, then grant users specific priveleges on each table you create. Again you'll need trigers to either populate a single 'master table' with info as it is updated, or you will just send a
select * from outlet1, outlet2... outlet80
again you may decide to create a temp table from the above select, and implement a custom script to create it only when required.
In fact that is probably how I would do it.
Then in you web interface have a button to create the temp table, and display it to the current user (provided they have the required priveleges to view all the tables of course).
I don't know for certain if Lotus is able to implement this, I don't know about its 'database' solution. I know that to do something similar in Access isn't that hard, the only downside would be needing to handle user identification (which Access doesn't do natively), again I don't know about Lotus.
In my experience the 'flat file database systems' don't generally handle user permisions in a native fashion, it is put onto the interface development to hand this.
I'm not sure how helpful the answer is, but it may take you a little way to a solution (even if you end up going for a server/client dbms system)
You can use Lotus for this. A simple start for you:
Create a database with one form and one view
On the form add whatever fields you want but also add a computed-when-composed multi-value field of type "Readers" with formula:
"[Admin]" : #Name( [CANONICALIZE];#userName)
With the exception of those with an Admin role (e.g., your wife), the view will display to each user only the records that the user created. The users will have to create one record per row.
Alternatively you could create an agent in the database that reads the data from an Excel file and builds the documents (records) with the READERS field's value computed as the documents are created.
If that's the route you want to take post a reply here and I'll post some code to (i) prompt a user to select an excel file, (ii) read the excel file data into lotus notes, (iii) implement a READERS field to see that documents are kept confidential between the creator and the Admin role people.
Hope that helps.
I'm intending to use both of SQL Server and simple text files to save my data.
Information like Users data are going to be stored in SQL Server, RSS fedd for each user are going to be stored in folder with the user Id as a title and inside this folder I can put the files that going to store the data in, each file can take only 20 lines, if there is more than 20 then I make a new file.
When I need to reed this data I simply call the last file in the user's folder.
I need to know what is the advantages and disadvantages of using this method?
thanx
I would suggest you to store the text file data into either VARCHAR(8000) or Blob and store inside the table in database.
The advantages of storing in database is:
All your data is stored in a single place. It is very easy for you to backup and restore in other place, if required
Database by default comes with concurrency and if you have say multiple users trying to access the same row, same table, database handles it inherently
When you go for files and database kind of hybrid approach, you are going for distributed storage and you have to always make sure that they are consistent
If you want to just store the latest text file content, go for UPDATE. If you want to keep history of earlier text files content, go for SCD Type 2 kind of storage or go for historical table containing previous text file data
Database is a single contained unit and you can do so many things on it like : Transparent data encryption, masking, access control and all security related stuff in a single contained unit. In hybrid approach, you have to manage security in two places.
When all your data is in a single place, and once you have proper indexes, you can write queries and come up with so many different reporting use cases, using SQL. But, if the data is distributed, you have to manage how will be handling the different reporting use cases.
The question is not quite correct.
You should start with clarification of requirements for the application. Answer to yourself the following questions:
What type of data queries need to be executed (selects, updates, reports).
How many users will be. How often requests from them will be coming. Does data must be synchronized across users (Concurrency).
Need of authentication and authorization, localization.
Need for modification history support.
Etc.
Databases usually have all this mechanisms and you do not have to implement them in your application.
Depending on your application needs you decide what strategy to use for storing the data: by means of database, files, or by both approaches.
I am developing a web application in Java EE technologies(Spring, Spring MVC, Hibernate). In this application I am parsing an Excel file and need to add these data to a sql server database.
Before adding these data to the database I need to get the user input for each row in the Excel file whether they really want to add these data to the database.
I can do this something like this:
First save the data to a table(table_tmp)
Then display the data to the user and from their input add it to the actual table and remove from the temporary table.
But I think there will be a better solution (some kind of temporary storage that I can delete after getting user input).
Can I use some NoSQL solution for this?
Why do you need to store it in the first place? You want to allow them to upload that excel, and come back way after their session expired and select rows they want? Do you really have to make it persistent?
If yes, then do you have any problems with your current setup? If not then you'll be introducing another external component that needs to be administered and that you have to interface with (what happens if mongodb is down, not enough disk space, connection timed out, ...) just to keep a temporary file.
But if you still want to do it, then you might first consider something really simple (and fast), like memcached - a key-value in-memory storage.
I have a simple application to store Contacts. This application uses a simple relational database to store Contact information, like Name, Address and other data fields.
While designing it, I question came to my mind:
When designing programs that uses databases, should I retrieve all database records and store them in objects in my program, so I have a very fast performance or I should always gather data only when required?
Of course, retrieving all data can only be done if it`s not too many, but do you use this approach when you make sure that the database will be small (< 300 records for example)?
I have designed once a similar application that fetches data only when needed, but that was slow (using a Access database).
Thanks for all help.
This depends a lot on the type of data, the state your application works in, transactions, multiple users, etc.
Generally you don't want to pull everything and operate on the data within your application because almost all of the above conditions will cause data to become non-synchronized. Imagine a user updating a contact while someone else is viewing that information from a cached version inside their application.
In your application, you should design the database queries such that they retrieve what is going to be displayed on the current screen. If the user is viewing a list of contacts, then the query would retrieve the entire contact table, or a portion of it if you are doing a paginated view. When they click on a contact, for example, for more information, then a new query would request the full details of that contact.
For strings and small pieces of data like what a contact list involves, you shouldn't have any speed issues working with a relational database like SQL, MySql or Oracle.
I think it will be best to retrieve data when needed , retrieving all the records and storing it in object can be an overhead. And when you say you have a small database , retrieving the records when needed should not be an issue at all.