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collection of plain text files as a database
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Posted by jimspoon
Jun 15, 2011 at 06:50 PM
A simple idea. A database could consist of one plain text file for every record. Data fields and values for the record could be specified very simply, one per line.
For example:
Note = “Bought some widgets today at Ace Hardware.”
Date: “6/15/2011”
Time: 13:33
vendor:name: “Ace Hardware”
item.manufacturer: “WidgetsRUs”
item.description: “Widget”
item.quantity: 4
item.price: 2.99
Queries could be made against a collection of such files, and results could be returned in a grid. In other words, the “database” is assembled from the files on the fly with every query. You could even have a many to one relationship - e.g. in above example, if another set of “item.” fields were appended.
Problems: inefficient, slow, subject to error. Perhaps the files could be indexed to ease the performance problem.
Advantage: simplicity, data accessible and editable by any program that understands the format.
Advantages over CSV files: Ability to specify a record over more than one line. Ability to include only “filled-in” fields. Ability to put fields in any convenient order. No need to put fields in same order on every line, no need for extra commas in place of empty fields.
Is there any program out there that works in this way?
One example just came to mind - Windows Mail - in which each email is stored as a plain-text EML file. But obviously this is not a general-purpose usage.
Posted by jimspoon
Jun 15, 2011 at 07:00 PM
Other examples come to mind. Vcard / VCF files for contacts - and I see that iCalendar also has the same concept for a number of different types of records:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar
But do any programs work with VCFs / VCalendar files as their native format (i.e. not just an import/export format)?
Posted by Achim
Jun 15, 2011 at 11:51 PM
Hi,
perhaps GS-Base could be intersting for you (see post above)
best regards
Achim
Posted by Zman
Jun 16, 2011 at 12:05 AM
seems like that was the premis behind asksam - though I haven’t used it since DOS days
z
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jun 16, 2011 at 03:22 AM
What you are describing sounds very similar to the way Zoot worked before its recent update. Plain text files with delimited field headings in the body of the note, which could also be displayed in tabular form in the grid.
Steve Z.