Author: Hayden Smith 2021
Why?
What?
Data: Facts that can be recorded and have implicit meaning
From data (raw) was can find insights (information) that allow us to make decisions.
Data (and "big data") are becoming huge topics in the world of computing and mathematics. This course does not address these topics.
Data is part of every part of software (e.g. variables).
However, often when we refer to "Data" in software we're referring to a "Data Layer" - a part of the software that is focused solely on housing data.
Business Logic
Services Layer
Data Layer
Often stateless
Often has State
Interface layer
Receiving and responding to requests
Executing behaviour defined by the stakeholders
Generic system or user defined libraries
Storage of data
Database: A word used to describe a store of data. Databases are typically what a data layer consists of.
There are 3 main ways to store data:
As you move down the list, barrier to entry becomes higher, but so does performance.
To learn more about relational SQL, study COMP3311.
Persistence: When program state outlives the process that created it. This is achieved by storing the state as data in computer data storage.
Persistence can be interpreted very broadly, though in this course we will define it as storing data to disk.
Can we modify our project server to persistently store data? How would we do that?
A very common and popular method of storing data in python is to "pickle" the file.
Let's look at an example
pickle_it.py
unpickle_it.py
By haydensmith
