Suggested size of XML files?

Question

Hello,
I am currently building a catalog website where each page
will display from 1 to 5 products. I am using Spry with XML to
populate the products on the pages and with that using the
master/detail method to display more information about each
product.
For each catalog page I have created a XML file to go along
with it, listing the products and their various features. With 200
product pages, there will be 200 XML files! I believe creating
these by hand is my best way to go, programming in PHP and using
databases will be slow going for me because I am not skilled at all
with those. Using conditionals and the products unique SKU number,
can I create one monster XML file and load the products on each
page using conditionals?
Would a large XML file take too long to parse when checking
the conditionals? Would it will be too big to load in an appropiate
time? Once it is loaded will it be kept in the cache? Or maybe 200
XML files is the way to go when not using PHP...
Thank you,
Braxo

Answer 1

hi Braxo,
A couple points.
First, Spry should be able to handle the XML file. We have
tested files with 1000 records or more. It will take some time to
download, but once downloaded, it will be cached. Performance-wise,
it depends on the final size of the XML.
Second, with 200 XML files, it seems that in the time that
would take to make them, you can learn enough PHP to write one
script that would handle the whole thing. I think if you have a
database, use it. Managing those static files will be a total
headache.
You can do data set filtering to do what you want from one
big file.
Hope this helps.
Don