What was tested was the opening, searching, obtaining, and then use of data between a text file and an SQL database file.
I found some nifty program that showed you EVERYTHING your computer did on the CPU, reads, writes, opens, closes, deletions, etc. And then we ran the test by opening two files that contained the same data, finding something through a wildcard match, and then printing it to the screen (channel).
The SQL database took a whopping 1.9975ms to execute the opening, reading, searching, and closing of the file.
The text file took an excrutiating 239.3ms to do the same thing.
INI files are the same type of file as a text file, so the access times would be comparative as such, so just because the file is the same, means jack-sh*t about it's speed for access. It's just like looking at CPU and Mem usage for any other files that are encoded, like music or video, how they are encoded effects the speed at which they're accessed, read, opened, closed, changed, etc.
Also.. I don't believe I'd ever say reading from mem is slower than reading from a file, cept when that file is a *.db file, or other suchs super quick access file. There is a reason they are used for every major website that deals with a lot of data, such as e-bay or amazon.
As for the various varieties being used, of course some people may want one type over another type, and all the types have their pro's and con's. The reason I suggested SQLite, as opposed to mysql and friends, is that it's small and doesn't require any dirty user/pass protection on the database files, which is just silly for the kind of application that mIRC is. SQLite is also much simpler to learn, and it's really straight forward, which is a good thing for any scripting beginner. It also looks like a basic english line, grammar may be sketchy, but it's readable as such, and understandable (more so than some mIRC scripts I've seen).
I was just mostly making the suggestion in tandom with the multithreading topic on the other thread/board w/e, as I don't think anyone bothered to read what I had said (it was wordy).. and then I got to discussing SQL in a channel, and I suggested I'd make the "feature suggestion" to Khaled himself to see what his opinion was.
