Re: a provocative question?

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On 09/06/07 10:43, TJ O'Donnell wrote:
> I am getting in the habit of storing much of my day-to-day
> information in postgres, rather than "flat" files.
> I have not had any problems of data corruption or loss,
> but others have warned me against abandoning files.
> I like the benefits of enforced data types, powerful searching,
> data integrity, etc.
> But I worry a bit about the "safety" of my data, residing
> in a big scary database, instead of a simple friendly
> folder-based files system.
>
> I ran across this quote on Wikipedia at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_%28e-mail_client%29
>
> "Text files are also much safer than databases, in that should disk
> corruption occur, most of the mail is likely to be unaffected, and any
> that is damaged can usually be recovered."
>
> How naive (optimistic?) is it to think that "the database" can
> replace "the filesystem"?

Text file are *simple*. When fsck repairs the disk and creates a
bunch of recovery files, just fire up $EDITOR (or cat, for that
matter) and piece your text files back together. You may lose a
block of data, but the rest is there, easy to read.

Database files are *complex*. Pointers and half-vacuumed freespace
and binary fields and indexes and WALs, yadda yadda yadda. And, by
design, it's all got to be internally consistent. Any little
corruption and *poof*, you've lost a table. A strategically placed
corruption and you've lost your database.

But... that's why database vendors create backup/restore commands.

You *do* back up your database(s), right??????

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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