Take the 2-minute tour ×  I'm new to databases, but I think I
finally have a situation where flat files won't work.  I'm
writing a program to analyze the outcomes of multiplayer games,
where each game could have any number of players grouped into
any number of teams. I want to allow players can win, tie, or
leave partway through the game (and win/lose based on team
performance).  I also might want to store historical player
ratings (unless it's faster to just recompute that from their
game history), so I don't know if that means storing each
player's rating alongside each game played, or having a separate
table for each player, or what.  share|improve this question Why
do you think, flat files won't work? –  Ta Sas Sep 12 '10 at
2:34 Well...maybe they will. I can try them, but I'd like to see
what database options there are. –  Nate Parsons Sep 12 '10 at
2:38 As stillstanding answered below, grasping the theory is the
first step, with all other relational databases being more-or-
less functionally equivalent w