Re: What is your preferred VCS?

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Karel Miklav" <karel@lovetemple.net> wrote in message 
news:i2ve9u$1qg2$1@adenine.netfront.net...
> deadlyhead wrote:
>> For those who like Monotone: is using a "real database" really that
>> much of advantage?
>
> Where the hell this meme still draws the power from? I have not seen a 
> real application with a bunch of files at its core for a long time and I 
> do not really believe you are not aware of advantages of database over the 
> filesystem.

Well, let's see. Pretty much every Ada compiler uses the file system rather 
than some sort of database at its core. Would you claim that GNAT is not a 
"real application"??

Personally, I think there is way too much use of "real databases" for 
programs that will find no real advantage to them. When you use an SQL 
database as part of your program, you are introducing communcations issues, 
a second programming language (with all of the problems that mixed language 
programming entails), an additional large piece of software that needs 
separate maintenance and patching (many attacks occur through databases), 
and huge waste of resources. The latter isn't as important as it once was (I 
still think any program over 4 megabytes is amazingly bloated; given that 
most computers have more than 1GB of memory, that probably isn't quite 
true), but the other factors still are true.

There clearly are applications that benefit from a database (as when there 
is actually data that needs to be searched/indexed), but for most 
applications (especially the smaller ones), the costs of a database outweigh 
the benefits.

                                                     Randy.