Persistence of Data
The System Registry, page 4
The system registry or registration database provides hierarchical storage in a central location on each system. The registry is quite limited under Windows 3.x, supporting only limited data types and only one value at each node in the hierarchy. Under Windows 95 and Windows NT, however, each key in the registry may have any number of named values associated with it, and those values can be one of a wide selection of available data types including raw binary data. Each value is generally under 2k bytes in length.
Is the registry appropriate for saving application configuration information? Absolutely. It provides a far more sophisticated structure for saving configuration information and you can easily save user specific information by simply giving each user their own node in the registry hierarchy. The registry is, however, harder for an end user to edit (which is either an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your application). Editing the registry always opens the risk that the user might accidentally make a change that could interfere with the correct operation of the system - since the registry, unlike private initialization files, also contains configuration information for the system itself. The registry is harder to access programmatically than private initialization files, requiring the use of more sophisticated API commands (though a simple set of Visual Basic commands are also available for basic registry operations).
Is the registry appropriate for saving documents? Certainly not. There is no clean mechanism for managing individual parts of the registry - how would you copy part of the registry to a disk file or send it through Email? The registry is, by its very nature, not document oriented. It is also strongly recommended that each value in the registry be kept relatively small.
Is the registry appropriate for saving record information? Not a chance - all the reasons discussed for documents apply here as well.
