The problem is exclusive containment. Folders/directories are an example of hierarchical exclusive containment. The author suggests avoiding the problems assoc

The problem is exclusive containment. Folders/directories are an example of hierarchical exclusive containment. The author suggests avoiding the problems associated with this by getting rid of the hierarchy. However, the author is onto something: storing functions in a database. Using the file system results in exclusive containment (file can't be in two different directories - link don't count) that a database can avoid. If you are lost, think of Gmail's tags with nesting. You can still have the hierarchy but data can be "located" under different tags. A lot of times the problem is using the file system as the back end. Python's modules, for instance, do not inherently enforce exclusive containment; the file system imposes this constraint. I had a chat with Jeff Bone a year ago after I read his partially-related rant here: http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/054578.html http://www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20091109/0545... I wish I could paste everything he said to me in here; he pointed me to a lot of examples of good file system / graph database examples that get a lot of these things right. Quick further reading list: Original ReiserFS design, BeFS design, FluidDB, LUFS, and Tannenbaum's design for the directory services and file system of Ameoba.