People are talking about MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and the like in this thread of discussion. And suddenly you're talking about local userspace programs on Lin

People are talking about MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL and the like in this thread of discussion. And suddenly you're talking about local userspace programs on Linux? There's a web-bias in the discussion. Database here is innately concurrent, such as when you and I submit a comment to this webpage (Hacker News), the ordering of our submissions are ill specified and effectively random. A proper database organizes the data (ex: PostgreSQL) so that its in a form that's well defined. This is true for even the smallest of web servers. Concurrency and concurrent access is fundamental to web applications today. I know PHP has access to raw files if you ever wanted them, but its definitely a dangerous proposition to be doing raw file access on web apps. There's just too much risk of data corruption.