I am creating a new website which has discussion forum as one of it’s key requirement. I am new to php/mysql, can anyone tell me, which is the best approach to store all the data from forum, either using XML Files or Database?
Database. XML isn’t good for anything, the little it was good for JSON does better.
Hi JIM, thanks for your quick response. I have one query with respect to JSON.
Is data persistence achievable by using JSON?
JSON is just a format, persistance depends on where you store it. It can be stored in cache, on disk (filesystem), database, on paper, etc etc
files and database are considered persistant.
But in this case you should use a normal database storage, it would not make sense to store forum stuff as json in the database. set up the respective tables so that you can query for the data you want/need.
Thank you Jim. 
Your suggestions really helped me.