Comment by WatchDog
2 months ago
It seems like an unnecessarily ambiguous term.
Without additional context, I would interpret the term “file layout” to mean the file and directory structure of an application.
Such an application could potentially store data as plain files, the names of those files may contain personal or sensitive information.
> Without additional context, I would interpret the term “file layout” to mean the file and directory structure of an application.
I would interpret it to mean a description of what the file contains and where. This is information you need if you have a mysterious file and you want to parse it. It's also information you need if you have some data and you want to create a readable file that expresses it. But for the concept to apply to a database schema, (a) the database would have to be a file, and (b) the schema would have to specify where the information in the database is stored. That's difficult to do, since the schema has no knowledge of how much information there is in the database or how it might be written down.
> It seems like an unnecessarily ambiguous term.
Agree, and, I don't even understand why it's in there in the first place (it should just not be) but that's a job for the legislature to resolve, not the courts.