When considering the standard article or free based storage methods, I am confused about the best approach to use with a more complicated data item. I have read most of the help items on storage, and many of the forum posts, but maybe I still don't understand what is stored in Joomla article vs. seblod portions of the database.
I understand that the preferred method is always standard article, but I have some concerns.
I will have a table of Inventory items. There will be about 1,000,000 rows (records), and likely 70 different columns (fields).
The table is updated (inserts, updates, deletes) externally by a sql replication routine to another remote database, BUT also by direct user updates via Seblod Forms on the website.
In a standard free table type I can manipulate the table with inserts/deletes/updates to the fields directly and only need to consider the cck_core for reference outside of the standalone free table.
The problem is that the content view is not available to the website user, as it is only associated with articles, and I'm sure there are other potential impacts when not using "Article" that I am unaware of yet.
If I use the Standard Article approach as recommended, my concern is overhead and database impact by the number of fields and changes to the table if using Standard Article. 1,000,000 records with 70 fields.
Because of the additional relationship between Joomla Articles and Seblod, are there not going to be added complexities and potential for orphaned data items, etc. For Example there could be significant deletes of items by my system if a brand is discontinued several hundred records would need to be deleted (Purged) from the system. This could happen by the external replication program mentioned above.
The requirement for indexing or searching content is minimal as most of the fields contain data like price, unit type, specifications, etc. Potentially from a lookup standpoint it would only be the item name/description, or location. So including many of the fields in joomla isn't important.
It seems to me the method for external/programmatic manipulation of data is easiest with the standard free method, and that the likelihood of having joomla core tables impacted is much less risky… but at what impact to use of standard tools in the system. Example Content view.
Thanks in advance for help in confirming or providing additional guidance, as I am still a new user to the system.
If you need single item view I'm afraid you are stuck with article, it serves as container for Seblod in single item view. Article does not create much overhead, but you do need to take account of it, so if you delete items you need to cleanup articles too. All such article normally contains is short code with id of the seblod core table, also some fields like article tile, that match core article columns, get stored there.