@Aki,<br>What about using the text file to accomplish the task anyway....<br><br>On the premise of ease of using text files, I would simply take a snapshot of the first file A, in the specific period, then on the 24hr history file B, I append it with the changing contents of file. <br>

<br>A way to implement this is to ensure the automatic updater working on file A puts special characters in the last 10mins, so that I can easily use code to decipher the last 10 inputs. Or it shud make use of a time stamp on all event logs, so that text searching can check for an accurate time stamp like <br>

<br>2/29/2012 12:37 PM :
	                                    &lt;data&gt; <br>2/29/2012 12:36 PM
	                                    : &lt;data&gt;<br>2/29/2012 12:35 PM
	                                    : &lt;data&gt;<br><br>then select all data within time occuring in a 10min inteval.....<br><br>My thoughts....<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 9:31 AM, Martin Chiteri <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:martin.chiteri@gmail.com">martin.chiteri@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>

<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">@Aki,<br>
<br>
I also would not recommend any flat files for the storage of data in<br>
your system. Consider seriously using relational or even object<br>
oriented dbs (noSQL engines) which are probably ideal for you case. If<br>
you settle on RDBMs, you can use Triggers [<br>
<a href="http://db.apache.org/derby/docs/10.1/ref/rrefsqlj43125.html" target="_blank">http://db.apache.org/derby/docs/10.1/ref/rrefsqlj43125.html</a> ] for<br>
copying old records to Historical tables for future referrences while<br>
INSERTing new ones. This saves you a lot or time and clever code<br>
trying to determine if things have changed in your data sets, etc.<br>
<br>
If you have to use plain text files for storage then you can use<br>
revision control systems like git or svn / mercurial / bitkeeper /<br>
monotone / perforce etc. On top of that, you might employ systems like<br>
SWIG [ <a href="http://www.swig.org/" target="_blank">http://www.swig.org/</a> ] that let you hook onto their C / C++<br>
APIs and do things like diffs to do data comparison using your<br>
preffered language(s) which is C-sharp. This may or may not be too<br>
neat.<br>
<br>
Martin.<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div>Regards,</div><div>Greg</div><div>--------</div><div>Life is not a rehearsal, you only live once!<br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br>