[TwinkiDaBoss]

Alright so Ive been wondering, I kinda hate managing sql and such, Im just check what do you guys thing, how critical is SQL on big Scripts such as RP and such?

[billy123321]

It's MORE critical on big servers, more accounts to manage, you need efficiency. Solid 9/10 on the need for it.

[iConvict]

I've ran servers that didn't use SQL, and I had around a 100+ player base.

[TwinkiDaBoss]

Im making a roleplay server and Im planning on having roughly around 30-40 players online on average, Im thinking between SQL and Yini. Im simply tired of sql to be honest

[SickAttack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwinkiDaBoss Im making a roleplay server and Im planning on having roughly around 30-40 players online on average, Im thinking between SQL and Yini. Im simply tired of sql to be honest

The possibilities with y_ini are minimal to be honest, you should go with SQLite or MySQL. With SQLite/MySQL you could make leaderboards, an easy yet effective aka system, create membergroup lists even if the members in it are offline, you could also query banned elements in a fast process, and so on. Most of these things cannot be done in y_ini effectively, you would have to use multiple files for each aspect.

[Jake187]

It can be quite a challenge to manage SQL but if you just do basics like accounts it's very useful especially if in the future you do get a extra helper who has more knowledge they can set up web pages and such with information and so forth.

I've ran PR before without SQL and we've hit 280 players no problem and I've helped managed a DM server with no SQL for a few weeks which had over 400 players online at once, it's just basically to whatever your creating. With SQL you can make signatures and stats page online and such and it's way easier to manage and look up accounts once you get the hang of it.

The more difficult part of course is scripting it correctly but there's nothing wrong with learning new things.

[Fredrik]

I'd say it's important. Specially if you're concidering having a functional UCP in the future, as well as people managing stuff offline. I would not give everyone access to a FTP Server leading to the server. MySQL gives you more efficiency, and more control.

Hope you'll take it under concideration. With more than 100 users at all, it'll easily get messy in the files, and you'll have to use more time to find stuff.


Good luck.
- Fredrik

[Vince]

Very simple: without SQL you pretty much can't do anything that involves more than 1 item. Want to find the player with the most money? The least money? The highest score? The lowest score? The player that owns the most houses? etc, etc, etc.

Most of those RP servers also use some kind of "key" system where keys to a house can be distributed to other players. With flat files you're limited to a fixed number of users, with SQL there is no limit. You could create a table "house_access", for example, which contains two columns: houseid and userid. If a match is found in that table the user can enter the house, otherwise they can't.

Another example: bank transactions. Most servers currently store only one value "bankMoney", but how explanatory is that, really? With SQL you can insert a new row each time a transaction is made. You don't have to store "bankMoney" anymore either as you can just sum all the transactions together to get the right amount.

There's probably more examples, but I'm just quickly typing this up in my lunchbreak.

[Sergei]

Quote:

Originally Posted by billy123321 It's MORE critical on big servers, more accounts to manage, you need efficiency. Solid 9/10 on the need for it.

What makes you think that it's connected with how populated the server is? The only thing that matters is, what you want to achieve.

For roleplay, it's nearly mandatory nowadays because scripts are getting more and more complex, you need easy access to multiple "types" of data. But on the other hand you can have a server with 1000 players that only stores data that is directly connected with speicifc player; you would lose nothing if you stored every player's data in a file here.

[Abagail]

Let's take San Andreas Roleplay as an example. A few months ago, they were still using dini and even the default SA-MP IP ban system.

Look how large of a server they are, and they did just fine(ofcourse they recently converted to MySQL, but that is beside the point).