Section 14.3. Of Persistence

14.3. Of Persistence

Programs cannot be assured of running forever. Virtually all computer main memory (i.e., RAM) is volatile, meaning that if the power is removed, the data is lost. Since computers are sometimes rebooted, and since the power sometimes goes out, we obviously need some place besides memory to store our class instances. We need persistent (nonvolatile) storage. This can be as simple as streaming our classes out to flat file, or it can be as complex as a clustered multiuser database. We will discuss the selection criteria and how you might choose your persistent storage strategy.