When/why should I start using a database?

Question

I'm currently in the process of evaluating the design, and possible reimplementation of an in-house app our engineers use.

Although the application handles large amounts of data. Only two sets of values (floats) are saved along with a simple name and description of the data. In my opinion the current application is in overkill territory using a normalized access database to store what evaluates to 7 fields of strings and floats.

At what point do you start looking at transitioning from a flat file or serialized XML to a relational database or vice versa?

Answer 1

I would recommend using a lightweight database like SQLite which reduces a lot of the overhead of using a database.

http://sqlite.org

Answer 2

Databases can have huge advantages over flat files, even if you only have a single table with a few values.

They can dramatically improve query speed if you have a large amount of data - if you only need to find one value via a key, pulling this from a DB with an index prevents you from having to parse the entire file and search.