Re: Database storage approach

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

The file system is a database of sorts, with efficient methods of
accessing and modifying the data.  It also has many tools that can be used
to back it up, and corruption in one part of the file system will not
necessarily destroy all the data.

Most of the examples you give can be done with current tools (well with
command line tools, but if it can be done on the command line, it would be
possible to write a GUI).

Where are all the gnumeric files?
  find . -name '*.gnumeric'
Where are all the files I modified last week
  find . -mtime 7
All text files -- you could use find in conjunction with file

As for the getting previous revisions of a project, part of bonobo
document model will include using librepo (the library implementing the
revision files for PRCS -- similar to CVS/RCS).  This would give you the
revision history you want (it would also allow you to undo changes from
previous edits of the document (although maybe not on a single change
basis)).

When people start to go on about putting all your documents into a
database, I think isn't that what the file system is for?  If the file
system doesn't support a required feature, then maybe it should (eg.
metadata).  When it is not practical to implement that feature in the
filesystem (eg. can't add metadata support to filesystems under solaris or
other commercial unixes), a small change that causes the least upsets for
other programs is often the best.

For your example, if all my documents are stored in a database, how do I
edit them with plain old vi or emacs?  Can I use sed to perform
substitutions in the document easily?  What do I do if some other process
has the database locked for writing? (for this problem, you could have a
database server that handled all requests and handles locking and
everything.  But isn't that what the OS does with the file system
already?)

I am sorry if the comments seem a bit harsh, but in this case, I believe
that the gains from putting all your documents into a database are quite
small when compared to what you loose.

It would be nice if the find command could be augmented to allow
searching by metadata though (this would give you most of the document
search abilities you could want)

James Henstridge.

--
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/


On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Alexander Peuchert wrote:

> Hi Gnomers,
> 
> I have a short question including a proposal. Well, I posted it a week ago
> wrapped in some gnome-mailer comments, but I think it's worth remailing it
> and think about it ...
> 
> How about using a database for file storage instead the file system.
> 
> For example:
> 	show me all gnumeric documents.
> 	show me all documents, I edited last week.
> 	where are all the text files?
> 	I need the report like it was before I edited a second time.
> 	... and so on ...
> 
> 
> This thought comes every time I'm forced to use M$ software and every app
> uses its own default folder for saveing things. The next time I try to
> find something its vanished and can only be found using a search( if I can
> remeber the name ...)!
> 
> GNOME should be easier accessable! No filesystem anymore, only an
> interface to a database. This would also attrakt users not familiar with
> computers.( My girlfriend's mom doesn't understand the inner secrets of
> filesystems and is very afraid of them ... )
> 
> There would also be a possibility to let the user chose from the file
> dialog between the database access and the file system.
> 
> alex
> 
> Alexander Peuchert
> mailto:alexander@peuchert.de
> http://www.peuchert.de ( not very interesting yet ;-) )
>