Comment by lngnmn

9 years ago

The word database means transactions committed to a persistent, durable storage (such that the data could survive a reboot).

13 comments

lngnmn

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castis  9 years ago

iirc "database" means an organized collection of data. persistence is just a nice feature.

  • threeseed  9 years ago

    It literally means: "a structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways."

    You are right that restart survivable persistence has absolutely nothing to do with it.

    • sbov  9 years ago

      This comment branch is a weird topic, but the implication of these definitions is that modern languages come packaged with multiple databases, some of which can scale to billions of writes per second (arrays, lists, sets, etc.)

  • flukus  9 years ago

    So I can write a linked list and call it a database?

    • eternalban  9 years ago

      No. OPs have datastores confused with databases.

      People used to get filthy rich (hi there Larry) building databases (which has all sorts of data access & management goodies) until 21st century came along and in the name of "progress" a hashtable with an HTTP interface was called a "database". Of course as nod to the said filthy rich guys from the 20th century we called them "noSQL" "databases" so as to let them continue to charge money from all those silly people in the 20th century that built their information systems on (the now "defunct" :) "databases".

      6 replies →

  • lngnmn  9 years ago

    Nope. Old definitions still holds. If some hipsters are re-using the word to bullshit people it does not mean that correct connotations are deprecated.