Using Flat Files Instead of Databases

Tim O’Reilly reports on web developers using flat files instead of proper databases for storage. I’m a big believer in using simple flat files unless you actually need a database. E.g. the way the Daring Fireball home page contains posts from two different weblog streams, interspersed chronologically — that’s assembled on-the-fly based on text files on disk, and typically takes less than one-hundredth of a second. (Via Tim Bray, another flat-file fan.)

★ Thursday, 27 April 2006