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Comment by andrewl | Hacker News Reader

Yes. In this interview Michael Stonebreaker, one of the original developers of PostgreSQL, discusses (among other topics) replacing the file system with a database :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPObBOwIrHk

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This is one of those perennial ideas; let's get rid of hierarchical file systems and just keep all the files in a database. Speaking as a user who knows how to keep things organized, I like hierarchical file systems. Store the data in a database if you like, but don't break my metaphor.

I like a hierarchy, too. Presumably the underlying engine could be a database but it would at least appear to the user as a tree. But with the option to find files with SQL or a SQL-like language. I would love to be able to find files based on all kinds of metadata that was available for searching with the OS’s file system, and not using any special tools. I’m thinking things like EXIF data, audio file metadata, text file line count, and so on.

The tree-view is practical for users but seems impractical for relational database performance.

SELECT * FROM files p LEFT JOIN files c ON p.id = c.parent_id LEFT JOIN files gc ON c.id = gc.parent_id LEFT JOIN files ggc ON gc.id = ggc.parent_id .... where p.id = 123

Datalog could handle it, though.

When you have a hammer, everything starts to seem like a nail. /s :)

Why the /s? There is a reason why we don't use hammers for all tasks even though we could find ways to accomplish many of them with one.

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