Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Matthew Carter Newsgroups: comp.lang.php Subject: Re: Php login/registration page Date: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 16:16:18 -0400 Organization: Ahungry (http://ahungry.com) Lines: 28 Message-ID: <87y4swrjsd.fsf@ahungry.com> References: <844d52dc-57de-48bc-8d61-ef12d7696389@googlegroups.com> <87ppe9vl0e.fsf@ahungry.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: mx05.eternal-september.org; posting-host="7c986cd4736462de309a749b207746fe"; logging-data="16078"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19IDq6SKrGSZkclqj7PjW2C" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:kiInFOBePwEvRxHR9RGp8L3f1LI= sha1:orBK9fZeoWfslQBJGzPKrTA3wlo= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.php:14283 Denis McMahon writes: > On Fri, 03 Oct 2014 00:24:01 -0400, Matthew Carter wrote: > >> I'd think the intention of a non-database registration page would be a >> page where the user fills out a form and the data posted writes to a >> flat file (which is then subsequently read from for confirming a user is >> registered, to access a single member only page). > > But that flat file is a database. > > This is one of the issues. You can't store registration information to > use at a future login time without holding somewhere, on the server, a > list of users. Regardless of how and where you store it on the server, > it's a database. "A database is an organized collection of data." - Wikipedia. How literal do you take it/where do you draw the line though? Written to disk = database? Stored in RAM = database? A collection of Pokemon cards = a database? In the context of software, I think 99% of the time a reference to a "database" is a reference to a DBMS, not the literal meaning. -- Matthew Carter (m@ahungry.com) http://ahungry.com