Storing data permanently

[shaungoater]

I am writing a program that compares images. I need to permanently store the images along with some data for these images. What is the best way to do it. Can i use xml to store the images along with corresponding data. Or should i just store the images in a folder and have a text file with the path names of the images and their data which can be read in at startup. Any other ideas for solutions will be much appreciated.

[mindwarp]

I deal with 100's of images of human faces which I manipulate using java...

my experience leads me to:

1. how big are the images?
2. how many do you need to have in memory at a time?
3. dealing with many large images at the same time SLOWS down your system
4. have you looked at extracting "feature" information from the images instead of dealing with the complete images themselves? that way you can deal with less data...

[shaungoater]

I was planning on having a number of images in my database which i can add more to and then run my program to extract rgb info from the image. Once this is done i do not need to access the image just the data. The idea is that i can find similar images using this data. So i only have to get the actual image file if it is a search result or the image being compared otherwise i am just comparing numerical data. Do you think it is better to have a folder of actual images and then an xml file or just a text file containing all the data. I was planning and setting the data up in some sort of tree format so that some images can be discarded before the search starts. For example if the image is predominantly blue then only compare it with other predominantly blue images.