Web Programming language for very large lists?

Question

In your experience, what is the best web programming language used to handle sorting and comparison of very large lists (ie tens of thousands of email addresses)?

I am most familiar with PHP. I think that it could get the job done, but I'm unsure of other languages and if there might be a bettor suitor.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Is it possible to do the sorting inside of a database? They are designed to do dynamic sorting and comparison. I would suggest you move to a model that lets the DB handle this sort of activity.

If you really really can't use a DB for some reason then you should focus on algorithms over languages. Pick a language based on other criteria (personal familiarity, does it support your other tasks, does it have an active support community, etc etc) and figure out the best algorithm given that language's quirks. For instance, according to some of the discussion in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/309300/defend-php-convince-me-it-isnt-horrible, PHP has relatively poor recursion performance.

But seriously, use a database for this.

Answer 2

I would store the emails in a database, and use SQL to perform sorts and searches. That is what databases were designed for, and they will have intelligent solutions that will outperform anything most people could write in code.