File and database

Though the file system comes with some costs and certain cons, a good internal folder structure and choosing a folder location that may be a little difficult to access by others can help. Note: I've skipped some contradictory points to curtail the content because while comparing two things, we often end up finding that the pros and cons of one are the opposite of other. Be cautious with your Select query. Caching the file data can help reduce memory and database usage.

If you are using SQL server or a higher version, make use of Filestream. Filestream enables storing blob data in NTFS while ensuring transactional consistency between the unstructured blob data with a structured data in DB.

To explore more about Filestream, please refer to this link. You may realize that I haven't stated which is the better choice yet. The answer is that it depends. I know that answer might make you furious, but honestly, the key lies in analyzing your requirements and anticipating the worst cases before hand. Based on our product requirements, we at Habile opt for the file system when we deal with massive quantities and heavy files, and we go the database way in cases when we have lighter and fewer files.

Adapting to the Filestream feature of SQL server could be a worthy try, though. So, we at Habile have initiated incorporating Filestream. We encourage you to do the same if you can afford it. Published at DZone with permission of Abuthahir Sulaiman. It mostly consists of different types of files like mp3, mp4, txt, doc, etc. A file system enables you to handle the way of reading and writing data to the storage medium.

It is directly installed into the computer with the Operating systems such as Windows and Linux. It consists of a group of programs that manipulate the database. In large systems, a DBMS helps users and other third-party software to store and retrieve data. Skip to content. This functionality is useful when the Next-Best-Action outbound schedule includes multiple actions.

This approach consolidates multiple action details into a single location. Did you find this content helpful? Want to help us improve this content?

Pega Academy has detected you are using a browser which may prevent you from experiencing the site as intended. To improve your experience, please update your browser. Context: I've written a filesystem that has been running in production for 7 years now. The key difference between a filesystem and a database is that the filesystem API is part of the OS, thus filesystem implementations have to implement that API and thus follow certain rules, whereas databases are built by 3rd parties having complete freedom.

Historically, databases where created when the filesystem provided by the OS were not good enough for the problem at hand. Just think about it: if you had special requirements, you couldn't just call Microsoft or Apple to redesign their filesystem API.

You would either go ahead and write your own storage software or you would look around for existing alternatives. So the need created a market for 3rd party data storage software which ended up being called databases.

That's about it. While it may seem that filesystems have certain rules like having files and directories, this is not true. The biggest operating systems work like that but there are many mall small OSs that work differently. It's certainly not a hard requirement. Just remember, to build a new filesystem, you also need to write a new OS, which will make adoption quite a bit harder. Why not focus on just the storage engine and call it a database instead? In the end, both databases and filesystems come in all shapes and sizes.

Transactional, relational, hierarchical, graph, tabled; whatever you can think of. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Database vs File system storage Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 6 months ago. Active 1 month ago. Viewed k times. Sriram Sriram 1, 2 2 gold badges 10 10 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges.