[daisy] Content in directory structure

[Paul Focke]

Carlos Palol wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This question might be obvious; please excuse my weak informatics
> theory background.
>
> Why does the repository server store content in a directory structure?
The content is stored in the file system.  The database contains 
pointers to where these files are stored.  Every time a new version is 
created (every time you press save in the wiki) a new content file is 
placed on the file system.  This can result into a large number of 
files.  Some file systems do not cope well performance wise with a large 
number of files in one and the same directory.  That's why files are 
stored in an arbitrary directory hierarchy since this reduces the amount 
of files in a directory exponentially for every level of the hierarchy.
> Why doesn't it use the database?
We like to be able to stream our binary content since this is seen as a 
good thing when dealing with large binary files.  If we would be using a 
database we would store the data in some kind of BLOB format.  Not all 
databases support streaming of BLOBs.  Also I find that there is not 
much added value in placing BLOBs in the database since you usually 
don't do any queries on BLOB content anyways.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> regards,
> -- 
> Carlos Palol
> _______________________________________________


Paul