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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps one day we can store stuff directly into a transactional database. I'd actually love to see an OS based on this principle.

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Remember WinFS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

The idea was that the OS used a relational DB-like file system to store things and recognise them for what they are and deal with them differently instead of everything being streams of bytes, e.g. pictures aren't the same as Word documents.

Didn't materialise but I remember at the time being dead excited by the concept.

MVS is pretty much that.

Ok perhaps a little more modern, where the database can be distributed, and where the transaction handle can be sent to different processes so you can have multiple microservices running in a single transaction.

And the database will at a lower level consist of ..... files.....

High end databases are often run directly on block storage. The db already manages allocation and caching so a filesystem just adds overhead and wonky semantics.

And therefore files will eventually go extinct?

And therefore your nitpick that a database will consist of files is wrong. (not to mention that the article is not about files as an implementation detail, but as files about a user interface)

What is this magical "high-end" database that operates without the use of any "files"? Certainly not Oracle or Sybase. Sure, they have "data partitions", but the database executables are distributed and stored in files. And what is the magical file-less operating system that they run on? Ooooh we're in "files are extinct land". Where nothing needs files.

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