Thread: [OT - almost] Looking for best way to save App data - is XML OK

For configuration data, XML is good because it lets you store data in a human readable and modifiable format with just a text editor it is also easily transferable via a file unlike registry settings. I find it takes more to work with then just ini files though if your just going to store simple value pair values. If you have more complicated structure to the data your storing then XML is defnitly the way to go.

The only reason why you would want to use an access database over XML is if you have some very complicated data manipulation that you would like to do with SQL quieries. You can do quite a bit with just XML and a reader that supports XPath quieries though, so I doubt you would want to introduce the overhead of using access.

XML or INI files should do fine. And there isn't much overhead using an
access database, as an access database is just JET, which is built into
the OS. Access is not needed. But if you are doing just simple storage
and retrieval XML or INI files should do just fine. INI files being the less
resource intensive.

Frodo

INI files are for 'flat' name/value pairs, XML is for hierachical data (of which a subset is name/value pairs), SQL is not for hierachical, but for relational data. They dont really compete, it really depends on your data.

XML is highly versatile and well supported by .NET.

If you have 10,000 contacts and you want to find those that are closest to your current lat/lon ordered by their spatial relationship to you, then a SQL database like Postgres will be perfect, if you need to store the x/y coordinates of the app when it exists, then INI is perfect, if you have anything else... XML.

Why would this be OT ?