61–70 of 108 posts
Somehow my first thought from the title was using sqlite as a format for applications. So like a replacement for ELF. I think this idea is both fascinating and horrifying.
Forget elf, imagine having a SQLite file that stores elf, exe and DMG binaries. I would not mind working on something like this.
Most application's file formats are structured as a tree, not as flat tables. If your application's data is flat tables or name-value pairs then SQLite is an obvious choice. But if it is tree structured then it is less obvious. You can still save your tree in JSON format as a blob in a SQLite table but in this case the benefits are fewer. But if in addition to the JSON you have images or other binary data then once a…
Naively, most data looks hierarchical and the instinctive reaction is to make your file format match. But if you think of this as a set of documents stacked on top of each other if you take the data as a bunch of 90 degree slices down through the stack now your data is relational, you loose the nice native hierarchical format, but you gain all sorts of interesting analysis and extraction options.
It is too bad relational data types tend to be so poorly represented in our programming languages, generally everything has to be mapped back to a hierarchical type.
There seems to be no single software solution "out there" for mounting an SQLite DB (or an SQLite archive) as a file system, with or without per-record relative paths.
Something to consider when using SQLite as a file format is compression (correct me if I'm wrong!). You might end up with a large file unless you consider this, and can't/won't just gz the entire db. Nothing is compressed by default.
It can be compressed, see https://sqlite.org/sqlar.html
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes it easy for me to find additional commentary for things I’m interested in, and I appreciate that. There’s no policing going on. If you find it off-putting, that’s your problem.
as i said and you ignored, all it does is put people off from having fresh conversations.
And that the previous discussions of the same URL are readily available at the top of the topic, via the "past" link.
So either HN itself is actively discouraging discussions, which seems unlikely, or your perception of this is askew.
The Acorn macOS app uses SQLite in a similar way: https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/docs/technotes/ACTN002.html
Somehow my first thought from the title was using sqlite as a format for applications. So like a replacement for ELF. I think this idea is both fascinating and horrifying.
Or a replacement for Access
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes it easy for me to find additional commentary for things I’m interested in, and I appreciate that. There’s no policing going on. If you find it off-putting, that’s your problem.
as i said and you ignored, all it does is put people off from having fresh conversations.
The Acorn macOS app uses SQLite in a similar way: https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/docs/technotes/ACTN002.html