Altering data with text editors is more or less the opposite of the integrity afforded by a database. Of course principled command-line tools for text (e.g. aw

Altering data with text editors is more or less the opposite of the integrity afforded by a database. Of course principled command-line tools for text (e.g. awk) and the possibility of running arbitrary SQL queries on a database blur the line, but the distinction between files that are read or written once as a step in a transformation pipeline or as something to load or save and databases that represent a persistent state, with transactions, remains sharp.