From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-08-26T04:32:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Which is faster for repetition: Ruby or SQL?

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Jason Crystal <jcrystal@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I was wondering if there was a general consensus for whether it's faster
> to do repetitive queries solely through Ruby (as on an array), or to
> make multiple calls to a SQL database of some sort.
>
> For example, if I have a dictionary, and I know I need to compare an
> entire paragraph's worth of words to the dictionary, should I query each
> word against the database?  Or load the entire dictionary into a Ruby
> object and index against that?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts!
> -Jason

Depends on your database, how you connect to it (net/local), and the
size/volatility of your paragraph/dictionary.  I'd say, split the
words out of the string and build a single SQL query in Ruby (probably
the brunt of it will go in the 'where' clause).

I would wager it would be almost infinitely faster than your proposed
options.  With my idea, the bottleneck probably would lie at the
connection.  Something to think about, anyway.

Todd