Where to store data?

[Lorey]

Hi!

Im just a newbie in Java. I have this project which is the same as photo album. I want the user to view each pictures in a specified directory and also allow them to put descriptions on it (maybe inside a richtextbox so user can input formatted strings). Where will I store the data (i.e. picture filename and descriptions).

Im thinking of Access or XML.

Im just working at home and have no high-end kind of databases.

Thanks!

 

[timw]

If you have some classes which hold the data in a 'JavaBean' compliant manner, you can use the java.beans.XMLEncoder and java.beans.XMLDecoder classes to persist this data as XML to a file.

For a db approach, I'd recommend using a different database than Access. Getting a stable jdbc driver for it will be difficult, if not impossible. Go for something like HSQL at

http://hsqldb.sourceforge.net/

, or MySQL at

http://www.mysql.com/

. They are stable databases with good jdbc drivers, and the're both open source.

Tim

 

[Lorey]

Thanks timv for a quick reply.
If its not to much to ask, which one would you prefer to use?

Thanks a lot!

 

[timw]

I would use a database. There are tons of jdbc tutorials on the web, plus good ones in the two dbs I mentioned.