[support] General Drupal question

Ms. Nancy Wichmann nan_wich at bellsouth.net
Fri Apr 29 14:21:58 UTC 2011


Joel, with all that we say that focuses on performance, there are things that we 
don't talk about much.

Compared to development costs, servers are cheap. Memory is even cheaper. A 
super high-powered server with tons of memory is going to cost, at most, maybe 
$10K. Total cost of ownership over the project's lifetime is going to be orders 
of magnitude higher.

The cost of the development and maintenance is most likely going to be, by far, 
the larger share of the cost. So finding a developer (and others) with a mindset 
that reduces that part of the cost is imperative.

When I develop a site, I focus on several areas:
1) getting myself out the door as quickly as possible (sounds strange to hear 
that),
2) making the user experience the best that I can make it so that ongoing costs 
and usefulness are optimal,
3) making it easy for external performance experts to get the best possible 
results.

If your design meets these goals, then go with it. I certainly think that what 
you've said indicates you have a handle on #1, with at least some of #2 in mind. 
Drupal's design generally allows for a good portion of #3.

You don't need the community's permission to proceed wih your design. Sometimes 
there is no "perfect" answer. I can categorically state that you understand the 
end goals of this project better than anyone on this list. It is also my 
educated guess that you (plural, as in anyone) won't understand all the 
performance implications until you are much farther along. We can only tell you 
that such-and-such didn't work for my project, which in reality was different 
from yours. So do it, learn from it, and share your experiences when it's over.
 
Nancy
 
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.



________________________________

From: Joel Willers
Basically, if I have the data structure and interaction already mapped out, and 
all the tables already designed, how much performance do I lose by setting up 
Content Types and Node References versus just creating the table manually, and 
writing PHP to control the data flow? 

 
Time-wise, I realize it’s much, much easier to do Content Types and Node 
References.  It’s like 1/10th the time.  But if Node References are going to hit 
the memory on the server too hard and cause performance issues and delays, then 
it just isn’t going to work.   
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