Chapter 14. Working with different types of data
This chapter covers
- Working with static data
- Working with dynamic data
- Working with infrequently changing data
In previous chapters, we’ve shown you what you can do with the Table service, SQL Azure, and caching. In this chapter, we’ll look at how you can choose when to use these three technologies. Rather than focusing specifically on the technologies, we’ll look at the types of data you can store with each of the technologies and at how each technology will help you store different types of data.
We’ll look at three types of data in particular: static data, dynamic data, and infrequently changing data. We’ll also focus on where you can store the data and how you can efficiently retrieve it.
We’ll start with static data.
Every application typically has some sort of frequently accessed static reference data. This data is usually very small and typically used for data normalization purposes. Let’s return to the Hawaiian Shirt Shop website and look at an example.
For each shirt displayed in the Hawaiian Shirt Shop web page, you might wish the customer to be able to specify the following criteria about the shirt they want to buy:
- Shirt personage type (men, ladies, boys, girls)
- Shirt size type (small, medium, large, extra large)
- Shirt material (cotton, silk, wool)