Convenience of mySQL over xml

Question

Currently I use XML to store specific information to correctly load a few things such as a list of specfied characters, scenes and music, Once more I use JAXB in combination with standard compression/decompression(ZIP) functionality to store a list of extrenous data. This data is called to add functionality to the character, somewhat like Skills in an RPG. Each skill is seperated into its own XML file with a grandlist which contains the names of each file with their extensions omitted and zipped in folder that gets encrypted.

At first using xml was working fine however as the skill list grow i worry about its stability. I was wondering if I should begin storing the data in mySQL. Originally I planned to simply convert everything to JSON over xml but i think possibly mySQL would be a better move.

Can anyone inform me of the key difference and pros and cons of each I guess i'm looking for the best way to store the data more conviently and would be easier to operate on. The data is mostly primatives and strings and the only arraylist of values i have i can just concat into a single field and parse later

Edit:

If I am going in the right direction with XML would it make sense to convert it to JSON and use maybe Kyro or EclipseLink JAXB (MOXy)

Answer 1

Databases have a quite different use case than file formats like XML.

File-Formats like XML:

• Are saved once and loaded once per application start-up.
• Since they are loaded once the access time after the loading is extremely fast.
• Used for serialization and deserialization as well as configuration files.

Databases:

• Are for the most part constantly in memory.
• Changes to the database apply directly. That means that if the application which is writing the database unexpectedly shuts down all changes except the last very few (or even those too, if the database is external) are applied either way.
• Access time is quite slow in comparison as queries need to be parsed, hashes be calculated and other stuff.
• Due to the other attributes they are used as "Persistance Layer" for long running applications which constantly change (servers in most cases).

Answer 2

If this is just simple, local information, then storing it in any kind of "database" is massive overkill, let alone something like MySQL. SQLite might be appropriate.

These data seem to be for game concepts. So don't forget: you need to author this data. It's a lot easier to hand-edit XML/JSON/etc than it is for some kind of database. You can even develop tools to validate XML, thus making sure that values are within acceptable ranges. If you use something like a Lua script, you can even have dependent properties, where changing one value can change it globally across all scripts.

Considering how easy it is to author text, and how hard it is to author databases (unless you want to write a specialized editor program), I see no reason to use databases for this at all.