Re: [Nolug] I used to think that Windows bashing was just Linux fanboyism...

On 10/26/12, Clint Billedeaux <clint@fastbadge.com> wrote:
> Actually, I'm using flat files and no database as a cost savings measure.
> I would have been happy to build a database over time, but I got an offer
> that was just too good to pass up.

Well... a structured flat file is still a perfectly valid database, of
course. Mbox and Maildir formats for storing e-mail are great
examples of proven flatfile database usages.
So depending on the application, and as long as you are just
appending and not constantly rewriting the entire file or doing
in-place replacements of records, it may be just the perfect thing to
use.

If you are storing application data in a structured flat file, it is
still a database -- just not a very sophisticated one. Without a
great deal of design and testing, for locking, integrity, repair,
inherently single-user, and one issue in the flatfile driver could
potentially violate the integrity of the entire dataset by damaging
the structure of the flat file.

So normally if the data is important and the dataset isn't transient in nature,
something like sqlite3, BDB, or a free RDBM such as Postgres or MySQL
is normally preferable
:-)

--
-JH
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