Hi there, I am writing some learning tests (i.e. what's the answer for...; choose correct options...). Now my question is, how should I store them. SQL db seems quite an overkill, but I really don't know what would be the best choice if I wanted to select random subset of questions etc. Perhaps some simple xml files?
Thanks for advice.
A RDBMS could be a good option for you since it sounds like you're wanting to collect some sort of result set based on the questions your asking. This way you'll be able to tie the questions, answers and users together is some logical way.
You could easily store the questions in an XML file and that would work, however it makes it a little more tricky to tie your overall data together.
One thing you could do is draw or write out a real plan of how you'd like your data to interact with itself and other data. This will probably give you a better idea of what needs to be done and how to go about doing it.
The easiest way is to go for a relation database solution. If you don't need support by the heavier db's out there like ms sql server i should have a look at ms sql express or sql lite. Thees database don't need any database server running to work, they are just file based databased and are easily moved around....