4 ms·

But in the end, isn't that just a putting files in database?

• danbruc 12y ago
  Well, if you see it this way, then there is no way to not use files at all. You favorite song will always be a string of bits and you will have to store it on some persistent storage if you want to listen to it again after power cycling your device. You will also always need some metadata to remember where you stored the bits. You can now decide how to call your bits - files, rows, objects, ... - and make some choices about the kind and structure - flat, hierarchical, indexed, ... - of your metadata, but there is not much more to the whole thing. Maybe you can add some goodies like redundancy, garbage collection, deduplication and what not, but in the end there is not that much of a difference between files, databases, registry entries, user account information or even objects in memory - everything is just a bunch of bits with some metadata.