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Related philosophical question - is a spreadsheet a database? It's certainly a base for data and can be used to implement all core concepts of relational calcu
by alexjplant 2y ago
Related philosophical question - is a spreadsheet a database?
It's certainly a base for data and can be used to implement all core concepts of relational calculus but it isn't designed for such and doesn't do so with performance in mind. Conversely, filesystems are often implemented using B-trees as many RDBMSes are but aren't designed for many of the operations one might typically ascribe to a database.
Nomenclature is tricky... how does that saying about the two hardest problems in CS go again?
- nine_k 2y agoI would hazard to say that anything that can be queried in a way more efficient than a full scan is a database, or can be used as a database. A spreadsheet, a filesystem, a hash table (aka "KV store"), even a sorted list, like a library catalog.
- lelanthran 2y ago> Conversely, filesystems are often implemented using B-trees as many RDBMSes are but aren't designed for many of the operations one might typically ascribe to a database. Filesystems are not a relational database, sure, but the word "database" in the context of computer systems, computer science, IT and technology in general doesn't mean "relational database". Filesystems are definitely a hierarchical database, which is different to a relational database.
- tptacek 2y agoSpreadsheets: no index, not a database.