读取/写入在线applet的大.ser文件的最有效方法

Question

I am writing an applet that I eventually want to put online so that my friends/family can use it. I have the applet running now locally, but in order to work properly it needs to read a .ser file in when the applet opens, and update that same file when the applet closes. The file is quite large (~180 MB), though I am working on paring it down.

What would be the fastest/most effective way to read/write this file in java? There is a lot of information out there on this and I have never done anything like it before, so it's a bit overwhelming. The class HTTPURLConnection seems like an option to read it, but not write it. Any free web hosting that I have seen will not allow a file that big to be uploaded.

The size of the file should hopefully go down substantially, it is a list of 2.8 million musical artists, many of which I'm sure nobody using the program will ever encounter, but if this program is to be effective, many artists will have to be stored, so the problem most likely remains the same.

Thanks in advance for any help

Answer 1

It sounds like it would be wise to keep this large data and the processing of it on your server instead of making the applet operate on it. That's because you would avoid each user downloading a large file and processing it. If you had a server side piece that the applet could call to get useful information from, then only your server would have to load it, write it, and process it. You could implement a Java servlet, or a PHP program to respond to http requests from your applet in a format that suits the data. I'm assuming that your server can handle either servlets or custom PHP (most can).