Comment on [Question] Public-facing Wiki
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoThe filesystem is a database as well.
Only in the most reductionist sense would this be true. In practice, a relational database (ie has a schema and querying language) is no replacement for a hierarchical filesystem, and vice versa.
A filesystem stores binary blobs of data, and its up to each file format to define the semantics of the data contained. A database is a data structure coupled with accessors to present and cross-reference structured data. Trying to do a LEFT-JOIN on three binary files is a category error. And storing a PNG in a MariaDB table would be a sort of malpractice.
A closer comparison would be an SQL database versus a data serialization format like YAML. Both have structure and have data that can be acted upon in specific ways. Arithmetic can be performed on numeric values, and strings can be concatenated together. But neither will let you concatenate numeric values, such as 2 + 2 = “22”. You need a programming language like PHP to perform such shenanigans.
In the context of serving web content, the filesystem is the domain of the OS, meaning it has been honed by decades of experience to make it as performant as possible, built into the kernel to utilizing whatever caching tricks that make sense, and this is available irrespective of the specific userspace stack (eg LAMP) that is running. However, no mainline OS has a relational database built into the kernel and is available for a web application to use. Database engineers go through great pains to optimize a system to run as a database server.
Phrased another way, there are no mainline OS’s that omit the filesystem. So removing the need for a relational database is removing an attack surface, removing a dependency, removing another thing that can break. The point of a database is to look up pieces of data. But if a web server can just serve up a whole HTML file that includes all the data needed, then the database can be omitted and performance will be higher as a result.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 week ago
Is this AI text? If this is AI text: Nevermind. If no: I guess we’re not really on the same page. I didn’t say relational database. I mean it’s obviously not. It’s a document-oriented one. Which is exactly the kind of database you need when processing …well… documents. If you do additional web application mumbo jumbo, you might need a relational database. But this wasn’t really about any of this. We were talking of how expensive document retrievals are…
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
This is not AI text and you’re the one who’s departed from the OP’s request:
The definition of a wiki is unambiguous:
The entire context of OP’s post is web, ie the Internet. We are not taking about physical book libraries. We aren’t discussing microfiche. The only relevant database type germane to OP is a relational database, as you readily noted:
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 week ago
I’m sorry. For some reason we’re completely talking past each other… Your harddisk/ssd/usb-stick is a document based database afaik. You store data in form of files/documents on your HDD. It’s a bit like a library, yes. Those documents are organzed a certain way. In folders… maybe on shelves or whatever the digital equivalent is… The important parts of a wiki (the articles) are organized exactly the same way. That’s why DokuWiki manages to pull it off without a relational database. It really doesn’t matter for something like an encyclopedia or knowledge database. Can be articles in a books sitting on shelves in some building. Or digital files on a server, organized by a very similar hierarchy / topics.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 1 week ago
What makes you think it’s AI text?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 1 week ago
I’m not convinced it is, that’s why I’m asking. Doesn’t really sound like it. Though I think it misses the point we were talking about, and is kinda verbose while talking about not really related points… Could be someone talking the way I do, or an AI, I can’t tell.