Yes, databases are useful. But there are a lot of good reasons not to use them: they’re a lot of work to administer and it’s very easy to make them run slow. Particularly when the alternative, ordinary flat files in an ordinary directory tree, is so incredibly useful. For more evidence, see Tim O’Reilly’s reportage on the subject, with inputs from Mark Fletcher (Bloglines) and Gabe Rivera (Memeorandum). Note that both of them are supplementing their flat files with memory-resident data stores; it’s a powerful combination. Now if Mark would only put some of that powerful machinery to fixing Bloglines’ broken Atom 1.0 handling...
