TAILORED FILE SYSTEMS VS DATABASE SYSTEMS

Tailored File Systems vs. Database Systems

Tailored File Systems vs. Database Systems

Introduction

With the technical viewpoint, the tailored file systems as well as the database management systems support the fundamental features essential for accessing the data. For instance, the two of them guarantee that;

A query language is supported;

Well defined schema are used for accessing the data;

Shared access is allowed by a community of consumers; and

Data is handled for ensuring its quality and integrity

However, the tailored file systems do not have many essential features which are required for the management of data, which are illustrated below, due to which data base management system is preferred to be used in an organization.

Transaction support

The atomic transactions ensure absolute success or failure of an operation. This is required specifically in the event that there is parallel access to the same set of data. This is included in the various features that every database imparts. However majority of the tailored file systems lack this feature. Just the file systems that are lesser known; Veritas VxFS, Sun ZFS, and Transactional NTFS (TxF), support this feature. Majority of the widespread open source file systems, counting in reiserfs, xfs, and ext3, ate not even compliant to POSIX (Beynon-Davies , 2004, pp. 20-22).

Fast Indexing

A database allows indexing on the basis of a data property or any attribute; that is, the SQL columns. This assists in retrieving the data rapidly, on the basis of the indexed attribute. This feature is not imparted by majority of the tailored file systems, that is, one may not rapidly access the total number of files that are produced at a particular time on a particular day. The desktop search tools, such as MAC spotlight or Google desktop impart this functionality. However, for this, they require scanning and indexing the whole ...