Performance: Need to read from LONGTEXT

Question

I'm building a CMS-type webapp that allows users to enter arbitrary-sized blocks of HTML. These blocks are entered by the user in their admin area and inserted into their template of choice when a page is delivered.

I'm guessing a user is not going to add more than 50-100 blocks and I'm not going to be getting more than 1000 users any time soon.

I was planning on using mySQL's LONGTEXT type to store these but I'm wondering if storing files in a directory will be more performant as the Linux OS will cache them? Given that I'm building for at most (1000 * 100) text blocks is there any reasonable performance worry with using mySQL?

Obviously I will be caching the HTML before delivery so I won't be reading these blocks on every delivery - reads will only occur when someone updates/creates new content.

I could use memcached/other cache/noSQL implementation or some other storage mechanism but I'm focusing on keeping it simple and delivering ASAP so don't want to introduce other stuff that I don't have experience with unless there's a significant performance worry.

Answer 1

I advise you to use a flat file rather than Mysql to store this kind of data.
Html is more a "file" than a "value information" so it hasn't to be in a DB.
Moreover, you will certainly have better performances.

You can also read this post.

Answer 2

Are the blocks of HTML content the only thing you are saving? If so, a file may be easiest.

However, it seems likely that you may want to save other bits of information along with the HTML and be able to query based on those bits of data. For example: date created, date last modified, name of the block, the user(s) who have edited the block.

If this is the case, then a database may be the best way to go. Since you said you do not expect to have many users (at least not a first) I would concentrate on finding the solution that is the fastest / most flexible to program and focus on performance and caching after your website begins to grow in size.