[development] Data-driven database tables and updates

[Khalid B]

On 6/12/06, Greg Knaddison - GVS <Greg at growingventuresolutions.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Khalid B <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
> > I am not sure if anything can be done here to improve this though. There is
> > no silvert bullet for this one.
>
> I agree very much with Khalid on these points.  I was quite surprised
> that subscription module uses serialize/unserialize of arrays and does
> it's matching in PHP instead of in the db.  The db is tens of times
> (hundreds, thousands?) faster at doing matching than a PHP loop.

Another example of why abstraction can be a bad thing. It devolves into
lowest common denominator or forces us into portable solutions that are
not flexible (e.g. use of unix time stamp is portable, but deprive us of doing
intervals in the backend.

The dilemma here is: Drupal is used for personal blog where this stuff
should not matter at all, but it is also used for large heavy traffic sites
where this stuff matters.