comparing two lists, one of which is very big and remote?
comparing two lists, one of which is very big and remote?
- Subject: comparing two lists, one of which is very big and remote?
- From: Bill Christens-Barry <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 11:32:46 -0400
In an earlier msg I mentioned that I've lost the URL for the Google
archive of this list, so I can't search for earlier items on this
topic. Sorry to bring up old issues without having looked there first.
I have the following task: Check a list of the names of about 20
files on a local (Mac) drive against the names of files (as many as
100,000 in a single unstructured directory ?!) on a remote,
Windows-hosted volume.
My concern is that the time required to do the comparison may be
grotesquely dominated by a one-at-a-time exchange of single filenames
across the network connection between the remote volume and the
machine hosting the querying AppleScript script.
Is this how such a comparison works? If it is, would I be better off
to have the AS script pass the smaller (local) list within some kind
of database query to the remote volume, and have the database perform
this query internally and then pass the result back? The Windows
machine I have to deal with does have an SQL database, but I don't
know yet how to deal with it. Conversely, would it make sense to
bring the whole list of files from the remote machine across to the
AS host and then do the comparison there?
What efficient techniques are available for doing this? Any concrete examples?
Thanks.
Bill Christens-Barry
-----------------------
Bill Christens-Barry, PhD
Equipoise Imaging, LLC
email@hidden