Doing searching - with or withous MySQL

[dummy]

I am going to build a music CD price comparison site and need to do searching on this site. So, user enters the name of the CD and will get the name of html file where info about this CD is.

My question is - with or without MySQL. I believe that MySQL does it faster. But it is very hard to find MySQl host with normal speed

Can it be done with arrays? Are there arrays in PHP? I don't know PHP.
Actually there can be two arrays, one containing the names of the CD's and another for links about each CD.

Or there is any other way? CGI? Or is MySQL the fastest and also the easiest way to do it?

[Weapon]

hmmmmmmm...... Free MySQL host are pretty hard to find, unless your on paid hosting?........ hmmmm.........

[jm4n]

I would use PHP and MySQL for this. Another method, however, might be to use static HTML pages and use one of many Perl search scripts -- but creating those HTML pages would be time consuming and a general waste of effort compared to using MySQL/PHP.

I'd recommend doing some research at http://www.DevShed.com. They have lots of articles about MySQL and PHP, and will give you a head start.

I would not use HTML pages, rather PHP pages serving content from MySQL. Each record could perhaps contain fields for the CD title, artist, track names, keywords, and finally a description/article. You could even store image data in there, for the CD cover art.

Go a little further and put lyrics in there. Even link to CDDB or another source, allowing searching by serial number... the possibilities are endless when you use a database as opposed to static HTML pages. You can put affiliate links to Amazon or CDNow, etc....

Now, realistically, you'll either need to really learn PHP and MySQL, or hire a programmer for the task. I don't know of any ready-made scripts for something like this, but you never know...