> Decades ago, PG wrote that he didn't use a database for Viaweb, and that it seemed odd for web apps to be frontends to databases when desktop apps were not[0].
After reading the link, I don't think that database means the same thing for everyone.
The vwfaq still mentions loading data from disk, and also mention "start up a process to respond to an HTTP request." This suggests that by "database" they meant a separate server dedicated to persist data, and having to communicate with another server to fetch that data.
Obviously, this leaves SQLite out of this definition of database. Also, if you're loading data from disk already, either you're using a database or you're implementing your own ad-hoc persistence layer. Would you still consider you're using a database if you load data from SQLite at app start?
The problem with this sort of mental model is that it ignores the fact that the whole point of a database is to persist and fetch data in a way that is convenient to you without having to bother about low-level details. Storing data in a database does not mean running a postgres instance somewhere and fetching data over the web. If you store all your data in-memory and have a process that saves snapshots to disk using a log-structured data structure... Congratulations, you just developed your own database.
After reading the link, I don't think that database means the same thing for everyone.
The vwfaq still mentions loading data from disk, and also mention "start up a process to respond to an HTTP request." This suggests that by "database" they meant a separate server dedicated to persist data, and having to communicate with another server to fetch that data.
Obviously, this leaves SQLite out of this definition of database. Also, if you're loading data from disk already, either you're using a database or you're implementing your own ad-hoc persistence layer. Would you still consider you're using a database if you load data from SQLite at app start?
The problem with this sort of mental model is that it ignores the fact that the whole point of a database is to persist and fetch data in a way that is convenient to you without having to bother about low-level details. Storing data in a database does not mean running a postgres instance somewhere and fetching data over the web. If you store all your data in-memory and have a process that saves snapshots to disk using a log-structured data structure... Congratulations, you just developed your own database.