Sunday, July 23, 2006

Wahey for Backups

So, there I was, about 90% of the way towards changing the way the system stores the group sizes. I had updated the database structure and found that I made a wonderful saving of 8MB.

Then it hit me - the major memory hits come from any tables that have a lot of records. The biggest table is the People table - 575,000 records. The next biggest weighs in at a mere 16,000, which is section data (each competition being split up into sections, such as a group phase or knockout stage).

Other than the People table, I wasn't losing much memory. And although on an individual basis the speed hit wasn't that big, there's no point in sacrificing speed for 8MB of RAM. Speed lets me do more.

So the backup was useful, to stop me having to spend time changing everything back. I've got to do that more often.

In other areas, I started playing Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood. The series is easily the best WWII shooter out there. It's atmospheric, looks great, and best of all doesn't treat your character as John Matrix. Invincible supermen don't work for me in a historic setting, so to see myself get ripped apart when in the open is joyous indeed.

Or not, as I'd rather kill them.

The sequel looks ace.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Better than CoD? I might have to give that a go then.

Liam said...

Different to CoD. It's squad based - you've got to order your two teams (assault team and fire team) to cover your arse, flank the enemy and finish missions through sound tactical planning and a little luck, as opposed to gung ho heroics.

Although you can do that as well, with a lot more luck.