Serialization vs SQL vs saving as text

Question

hello, I am at a standstill in my programming...I am writting a Meeting Reservation program and I am unsure about whether I sould use SQL or some form of database to organize the data for each meeting. The information that I am keepiong track of for each meeting includes the room, date, start and end time, Meeting name, contact name and number, and special equipment.
The main function of this program is to schedule meetings, and allow for easy daily print outs of the meetings for each day. Only rarely is it necisary to look up the time for a meeting by anything other than the date of the meeting. Would a database for this be more trouble to write than it is worth for this type of program. I have no experience with using databases in java.

Answer 1

I would definately recomend using a database. I have seen many applications like this start out as small, simple things and then grow over time to encompass more functionality. If they start out using flat files, growing to handle more data or more complex data schemes often turns into a nightmare.
Using JDBC is fairly easy and a database is hardly ever more trouble than it's worth (updating a flat file in the middle is a horrible nightmare).
Here is a simple JDBC program to read some data from a database.
import java.sql.*;
public class SimpleDBTest {
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    Connection conn = null;
    PreparedStatement sql = null;
    ResultSet res = null;
    try {
      DriverManager.registerDriver((Driver) Class.forName(args[0]).newInstance());  //Register the DB driver passed as command line arg
      conn = DriverManager.getConnection(args[1],args[2],args[3]); //Pass connection data, user name and password
      sql = conn.prepareStatement("select foo from bar");
      res = sql.executeQuery();
      while (res.next()) {
        System.out.println(res.getString("foo"));
    catch (IndexOutOfBoundsException e) {
      System.err.println("Usage: SimpleDBTest dbDriver dbURL dbUSer dbPassword");
    catch (SQLException e) {
      e.printStackTrace(System.err);
    finally {
      try { res.close(); } catch (Exception e) { }
      try { sql.close(); } catch (Exception e) { }
      try { conn.close(); } catch (Exception e) { }
}java SimpleDBTest oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver jdbc:oracle:thin@hostname:1526:dbInstance userName password