Get information from various sources

Question

Hi.
I'm developing an app that has to get some information from various sources (APIs and RSS) and display it to the user in near real-time.
What's the best way to get it:

1.Have a cron job to update them all accounts every 12h, and when a user is requesting one, update that account, save it to the DB and show it to the user?

2.Have a cron job to update them all accounts every 6h, and when a user is requesting one, update the account and showing it to the user without saving it to the DB?

What's the best way to get it? What's faster? And what's the most scallable?

Answer 1

12h or 6h, you have to do the math your self, you are the only one to know how many sources, how is your app hosted, what bandwidth you have....

Have a look at http://developmentseed.org/portfolio/managing-news it is drupal based and does what you need (and much more). You can either use it or diving in the code and see how it is done.