In article <418ac51b$1@news.povray.org>, tor### [at] torfboldcom says...
> > So,
> > how usefull would it be to have an embedded database in POV-Ray? What kind 
> > of things could one do then? Could it be helpfull for particle systems? 
> > Could it be helpfull for keeping persistent data between rendering frames 
> > of an animation?
> 
> As Mark already mentioned, POV has its own file I/O. IMHO we don't need 
> a database support with POV-Ray, but better file I/O. Right now, it's 
> limited to comma-seperated values, and IIRC some of them are also 
> automagically parsed, etc. I'd like to have a file I/O which at least 
> lets me read in a text file line by line (returning the whole line as a 
> string).
> 
Except databases go beyond simple I/O. For instance, a smart system could 
read in the contents of a .inc file to the database (or the equivalent), 
which will only be used in an animation in say 50 frames out of 100, then 
only read that back in from the DB 'when' it is needed, rather than 
parsing the entire file each time. I suspect that is a bit harder to 
manage currently, if it is even possible. It would be nice to let the SDL 
do most of the work and not have to rely on external applications that 
often don't cover 100% of all the things you need them to. This is 
especially true of custom built applications, since they are likely 
designed to only do one thing at a time, making them nice for the 
designer, but more or less useless for the community. unless of course it 
is one of those: Use program A to generate part X, program B to make part 
Y, program C to make part Z and then use program D to hopefully produce 
the SDL. Gives me a headache just thinking about it. ;)

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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