> Start with files, iterate from there. I agree so much with this. I run a small service that looks like it would be a perfect use-case for a database. Even

> Start with files, iterate from there. I agree so much with this. I run a small service that looks like it would be a perfect use-case for a database. Even though all the data is beautifully normalized and instantly searchable, using a database directly would be impossible. Instead it starts as a series of flat text files. From these flat text files, the database is automatically generated. Three big gains here: Version control on the text files works perfectly as expected. Creating ad-hoc and one-off columns (while figuring out how to best normalize unfamiliar data) is trivial and painless. Comments! It is so easy to write in-line notes. This alone is the killer feature of text files. Normalizing and curating data requires making a lot of choices and comments let me keep track of these. Of course there are downsides. You must edit the text file to add data. (With some exceptions, such as updating live prices/inventory.) If you have equal numbers of writes and reads, this system is not for you. But if you have infrequent (daily) writes then it is no problem.