Quote:

Not adding much to the discussion here except to say that if you can, take the time to play with MySql and use it instead of a flatfile system whenever you can... whatever time you spend learning it will pay off in droves in the future in terms of lowered development times and increased performance.



Yes I agree. Learning SQL will be beneficial, especialy if you expect your system to become more complex, or if it must be very fast under heavy load. Also, since MySQL (and I believe some other RDBMSs aswell) are seamlessly integrated with php, it will be a breeze if you know SQL. However, if you don't know SQL yet, you might want to go with flatfiles if you know it will not be under heavy load and you have to get it done quickly.

Quote:

MySql is free, and it's actually easy to setup and use!


While setting up MySQL is indeed extremely easy, optimizing the settings and your queries is quite challenging. If you don't do it right, flatfiles might give better performance (especially when the load isn't very high).

Quote:

The MySql plugin is great (has a small memory leak but nothing major)


Just FYI:
The way the system I proposed works is that you retrieve a webpage from within 3DGS. This webpage is dynamically created by a php script that runs on the central server. The page is basically a reflection of the database contents. As you can see, you don't need the MySQL plugin here and using it for this purpose (bypassing the HTTP request and the php script; talking directly to the database) will bring you alot of security issues (this is very different from your project where only the server -hosted by you only- directly talks to the database (or atleast I hope so for you )).

shader tutorial