Hmmm very interesting, I thought that the flat file would have been faster just because it seems a bit more "raw" if you know what I mean. I'm not sure what code I would use but it would probably be fopen to open the file, and probably just a loop to count the lines.....

I wonder what the overhead is for that versus the DB....

Just a hypothetical question though, not that I am looking to replace my DB or anything....