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I was immediately offended by your rebuttal and gave it some thought. It is an interesting definitional boundary. Perhaps the distinction is more pragmatic th

I was immediately offended by your rebuttal and gave it some thought. It is an interesting definitional boundary. Perhaps the distinction is more pragmatic than fundamentally technical. We typically use the term "database" to describe systems designed primarily for structured data management with query capabilities, while filesystems optimize for hierarchical storage of opaque binary objects. Therefore a KV is not a database either.

Kinrany 2y ago
Does that make Postgres not a database too? It can store binary blobs
- necovek 2y ago
  There is more to the above comment than just "opaque binary objects".
eru 2y ago
Filesystems are more like a graph database than a pure key value store. I think 'database' is a term with multiple (related) meanings depending on context. Another example is the term 'colour'. Depending on context, it sometimes makes sense to call black and white and grey 'colours', and sometimes it's better to treat them as something else.
tptacek 2y ago
Filesystems are structured and have queries.
shakna 2y ago
On "IBM i", all filesystem units are also objects. They have relationships, as well as hierarchy.
vkazanov 2y ago
Huh? Offended?! Filesystems present a durable way to store hierarchical binary/textual data. They normally have a very well-defined api used to provide a primitive query language. Sounds a lot like a database, no? Even internally they are very similar: journalling, paging, tree indexes are normally present in typical popular implementations. In some classic OS-s there is no separation at all between the concepts of a database and a filesystem. In a way, a generic durable database can be though of as a special kind of a filesystem. And vice versa.
yubblegum 2y ago
Storage Engine (using a store type) -> Data Store (ordered by data model) -> Database (providing semantics & management) k->v is a data store (using disk|inmem|networked storage engines). A database is a complete system for management of data. They come (or used to come) in various data model flavors: hierarchical, graph, relational, etc.

Kinrany 2y ago

Does that make Postgres not a database too? It can store binary blobs

necovek 2y ago
There is more to the above comment than just "opaque binary objects".

eru 2y ago

Filesystems are more like a graph database than a pure key value store. I think 'database' is a term with multiple (related) meanings depending on context. Another example is the term 'colour'. Depending on context, it sometimes makes sense to call black and white and grey 'colours', and sometimes it's better to treat them as something else.

tptacek 2y ago

Filesystems are structured and have queries.

shakna 2y ago

On "IBM i", all filesystem units are also objects. They have relationships, as well as hierarchy.

vkazanov 2y ago

Huh? Offended?! Filesystems present a durable way to store hierarchical binary/textual data. They normally have a very well-defined api used to provide a primitive query language. Sounds a lot like a database, no? Even internally they are very similar: journalling, paging, tree indexes are normally present in typical popular implementations. In some classic OS-s there is no separation at all between the concepts of a database and a filesystem. In a way, a generic durable database can be though of as a special kind of a filesystem. And vice versa.

yubblegum 2y ago

Storage Engine (using a store type) -> Data Store (ordered by data model) -> Database (providing semantics & management) k->v is a data store (using disk|inmem|networked storage engines). A database is a complete system for management of data. They come (or used to come) in various data model flavors: hierarchical, graph, relational, etc.