Tom Lane wrote:
"TJ O'Donnell" <tjo@acm.org> writes:
I ran across this quote on Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudora_%28e-mail_client%29
"Text files are also much safer than databases, in that should disk
corruption occur, most of the mail is likely to be unaffected, and any
that is damaged can usually be recovered."
Should probably insert as well the standard disclaimer about Wikipedia. Great source of info, but that particular sentence has not been corrected yet by the forces-that-dictate-everything-ends-up-correct-sooner-or-later to point out the design trade-offs between simple systems like files (or paper for that matter) vs more complex but safer systems such as databases.
And no, I wont write it.... :)
This is mostly FUD. You can get data out of a damaged database, too.
(I'd also point out that modern filesystems are nearly as complicated
as databases --- try getting your "simple" text files back if the
filesystem metadata is fried.)
In the end there is no substitute for a good backup policy...
regards, tom lane
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