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Stock simulator update



Well, I actually did some work on this today.  :-)

I wrote a database setup script in Perl that helps the user set up the
appropriate database structure.

I pretty much decided to use PostgreSQL for this, for a number of
reasons:
 - It's the only good open source RDBMS
 - It comes as a standard part of RedHat and I think some others
 - It has a good feature set

I know some people like MySQL, but it's not free for everyone, and
Postgres is plenty fast enough for this application.

Tomorrow I plan to make some HTML forms to drive the thing.  Like, the
forms where students can make trades, and possibly some others.

There's still time to decide on the backend for the Web part: Perl CGI,
mod_perl, or PHP.  I'm leaning toward standard Perl CGI.  Sure, it's
slow, but:
 - it's fast enough for this application.  The scripts will only run a
few times a day.  Perl CGIs only get messy when they run several times a
minute.
 - mod_perl is a HUGE memory hog in the server
 - PHP would mean we'd use different languages for the Web backend and
non-Web scripts
 - CGIs will not require much (if any) special setup, nor recompiling
the Web server, and will work on most or all Web servers

I think I can hack this thing by myself for now.  I'll ask for help
if/when I need it.  :-)

Any other comments?