Ask HN: tutorials on using the file system for storing data?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=207942

by Tichy • 18 years ago

5 13 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have to admit it, I am always extremely scared of simply using the file system for storing data. What if something happens in the middle of a write operation? How to avoid data corruption?

Another thing is I am not sure how to write data effectively, or is that covered with random access files? Like say some data item in the middle of the file changes, can I just change it on the spot?

Just saying, I am clueless about this. Maybe there are some tutorials for people who want to understand this alternative to using databases?

jsjenkins168• 18 years ago

Have you considered using Amazon SimpleDB? Its a very simple and fast way to persist data. Avoids the scaling and implementation headaches associated with a typical database.

Tichy3• 18 years ago

I did not really have headaches with databases yet. One issue might be not having database drivers, though (LISP programming???). Another might be use cases that don't match databases well. For example I could imagine search engines would be better off saving their data in a different way (specialized index files). Or twitter-like things?

jdale272• 18 years ago

"One issue might be not having database drivers, though (LISP programming???)."

Huh?

Maro• 18 years ago

Maybe you want something like Berkeley DB aka. libdb

It's a library that you link to your application which exposes a database API for storing and retrieving records in tables (which are stored in files). No DB server is involved, and since you use the programmatic API, there is no need for SQL (and it's not supported).

Reference guide: http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/d...

typedlambda• 18 years ago

consider using sqlite made for being an allmost universal fileformat also allowing transactions. Its fully ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) and even allows concurrent access (serializes writes)

it's probably the most deployed "database" (thousends of embedded devices, it's the fs one some ;-) .

ajross• 18 years ago

Generally, sane file metaphors try very hard not to change stuff in the middle of the file. Try to keep with one "record" (which might be a bigger object than a single row in a database!) per file, and read/write them all in one swoop. If you need indexes other than the one you get for free (the path name, of course), keep them in separate files and make sure your toolchain can rebuild them as needed.

The filesystem has looser rules about data loss than the database will by default, so unless you want to handle this yourself (which can be done), you should probably to turn on "ordered data" journalling in your filesystem (e.g. for ext3: "mount -o data=ordered"). Then you only need to be able to recover from a crash (or killing) of your own software, which is a problem you'll have to handle anyway.

The classic application for this sort of technique is a mail server. Software like sendmail and postfix has been doing reliable on-disk storage for decades now, and they don't have to jump through too many hoops to do it.

bayareaguy• 18 years ago

I would recommend reading Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques by Gray and Reuter, particularly the sections about ways to construct Atomic commits.

SQLite's atomic commit design is also good food for thought - http://www.sqlite.org/atomiccommit.html

However, while it's good to think about low-level consistency (e.g. disk writes) I think you're better off spending your time on your application's high-level consistency (e.g. procedures for identifying inconsistencies, logging your changes, recovering from backups). Your os developers have already spent countless hours on the issue of getting your blocks to disk, but you may be the only one who has spent any time thinking about what things are important to preserve in your application.

yaj• 18 years ago

Among other document-oriented databases mentioned, also check out CouchDB http://incubator.apache.org/couchdb/

Hoff• 18 years ago

For transactional file systems and transactional databases, the lower-level software deals with this for you. This whether a transactional SQL, or Mac OS X Core Data and its undo, or otherwise. ACID is goodness.

For non-transactional databases (and non-transactional file systems in general), look at the concept of "careful writes". At its simplest, you seek to allocate and work and read and write structures outside of the live application data structures and only add your structures into the static storage with a single-block or other canonical write as the last step of the update or change. To always avoid having inconsistent structures.

In the event of an application or system crash, you can (will?) need a clean-up daemon that finds and releases any dangling allocations.

And one that threw me: there are cases where multiblock writes might not see all blocks written. Some storage devices might either cache the data, or might (due to a power failure) not write all blocks.

You'll find various discussions and papers on "careful writes" around. And ACID. And related.

Once you get the hang of this sequencing, the next level of complexity upwards here can involve distributed access and coordinating and sequencing write operations. This can involve locking or queuing.

elad• 18 years ago

I started using the filesystem for storage a while back, and then realized that I'm re-implementing a lot of DBMS functionality in my own buggy code. I switched over to using a database.

I'm just saying that you should consider all of your requirements first, figure out how much code you're going to need that just manages your data, and then decide whether a database is really such a bad idea.

Tichy3• 18 years ago

I have no problems with databases, but anti-dab articles crop up on Hacker News every now and then. I was wondering if my fixation on db's would hamper my progress...

Ask HN: tutorials on using the file system for storing data?

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