My Newbie Question For The Experts

[mrbippy]

I have a couple of static arrays.

I currently access them from (with queries of course) a MySQL database.

I am wondering if it might be faster for me to just put the array into some php code.

$pages = array("p1","p2"...);

Then use an include page where I need to access the data.

$pages[0];

Instead of running SQL querys to get the data when I need it.

Any thoughts?

Also, how bad, or is it, to put CVS values into a database field?
example: "p1,p2,p3" as the field value instead of putting each value in a seperate field.

[brad_fears]

Any time you can eliminate a database transaction you'll save overhead. Unless of course your "static arrays" are huge enough to affect performance in reading from an external file (but they'd have to be pretty big).

As for the CSV question, I have done that in the past, and it works just fine as long as you have a way to separate the values and account for errors or irregularities (such as a missing value).

--Brad Fears

[mrbippy]

Thanks!

I had hoped that was the case. My arrays are not huge but they are of variable lengths, from 4 to 13 values. That is way I was concidering other methods besides using a SQL table.

A table with 14 or 15 fields and most records only holding 7-9 values did not make sense to me.

Thanks again.