"Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy." Data has no feelings. In the case of file system, it makes perfect sense to be stored in a s

"Data doesn't want to be organized in a single static hierarchy." Data has no feelings. In the case of file system, it makes perfect sense to be stored in a single static hierarchy because that perfectly reflects the concept of a paper file in a filing cabinet, in a little binder. Even a relational database system that lets you query tables for data based on set ordering has a single method of storing the data on disk - that's a clustered index. You can't get away from having that, despite being able to support additional nonclustered indexes. In that case, the table and its rows really is organised in a static hierarchy too. As it stands, NTFS has plenty of features that lets you attach a secondary data stream to a file anyway, and all manner of metadata. The Windows Internals book on NTFS is very informative on this. These features don't exist on APFS though, as it's not as good despite being brand new, it seems!