Database Manager - Data Storage

Freeware Discus

Freeware Discus has the capability of storing two different aspects of the Discus data structure in your MySQL database:

• Counters: Numbers that are used to assign a unique filename to Discus message pages and to assign a unique index to each message posted on the board. These counters replace the data.txt and postindex.txt files.

• File Locking: Discus uses a system of file locking to insure that any given file is being read to or written to by only one process at a time. Using MySQL takes advantage of the properties of the database's "INSERT" feature, which will fail if an entry in the table with the same "primary key" already exists, and thus indicate to Discus that the file is locked.

Discus Pro

Discus Pro has the capability of storing the above two aspects of the Discus data structure in your database, in addition to the following four:

• Moderator Data: Information on your moderator accounts, including all profile settings established by the moderator. This database table replaces the passwd.txt and md-accts.txt text files.

• User Data: Information on your user accounts, including all profile settings established by the user. This database table replaces the users.txt and us-accts.txt text files.

• Post Log Data: Information about each post made to your board, including the account used to post the message, the time that the message was posted, the name as it appears on the post, and the first few words of the post. This data is used to generate search results when searching by date or when using an author's name. This database file replaces the ###-log.txt files in the msg_index directory.

• Search Log Data: Information about each post made to your board, including the time of the post and all words in the post that have not been identified as "stop words" -- words that are excluded from a search index. This data is used when searching by keyword. This database file replaces the ###-search.txt files in the msg_index directory.

Why use the database?

In general, using a back-end database rather than flat text files provides the following two advantages:

1. Reliability: Storage in a database is more robust than the use of flat text files. The database incorporates safeguards against data loss and corruption that are not possible when using flat text files.

2. Speed: Retrieving data from a database is faster and more efficient than retrieving data from flat text files. The database system is optimized for data storage and retrieval.