A Path Less Taken

I’m a quiet advocate that Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) are overkill for some applications. A great example of this is small, web based utility programs that we write for ourselves and for others. Assume you need a small single user program with a limited amount of data. You can use a web server like lighttpd and a script engine like PHP to create a highly portable solution that will cross multiple OS’s. This is far from the only approach, nor is it necessarily the best, but it is viable, particularly for a developer whose core strength is in web based development and UI design.