[plug] Database Filesystems - Linux?

[hooker at iinet.net.au]

Quoting Timothy White <weirdo at tigris.org>:
> After having read about longhorns database system I started to see areas 
> it could be come very useful.
> 
> My currently biggest use for a filesystem like that is with my photo 
> collection. I currently have all my photos in subdirectorys with meaning 
> full names, although the photos retain there original names. Some of the 
> subdirectorys group more subdirectorys, e.g. School, Family...
> 
> What I would really like is a way to ask for all photos fitting a 
> criteria without having to store the photos in a special way.
> So in english, I want to be able to keep storing my photos how I am now 
> storing them, but add meta data (stored in each photo or externally) so 
> that I can ask for all photos fitting my search.
> 
> For example. I have just come back from leavers and half my photos are 
> my friends the other half is sunsets (very nice) and clouds. I want to 
> store them in a folder called 'Leavers' in a subfolder [of the main 
> photo folder] named 'Year 12'.
> Then when I want to show people my leavers photos I just go to that 
> folder or do a search on leavers. If I want to show people sunsets I 
> search for all photos in the category sunset and it shows all sunset 
> photos (previously marked as sunsets by me) regardless of the folder 
> their are in. Then maybe I want burn photos of my friends to CD, I do a 
> search for friends and I can then burn all the photos to CD-ROM or save 
> them to a flash card. With this last task it would be nice if it could 
> retain the original directory structure or dump them all to once folder 
> depending on the users request.
> 
> If nobody knows of a system that will allow me to do this easily then it 
> will probably end up on my projects list (unless I get a real job.)

It sounds as though a set of files in specific directories with meta data 
stored in a database would work well. Whatever MickeySoft promise for Longhorn 
(and the "database filesystem" IIRC has been delayed beyond the already delayed 
Longhorn release) I have serious issues with performance for *any* database 
system which is expected to handle everything from a single line note to a 
multi-gigayte zip/tgz backup file.

After all, a database is not a filesystem.

Hook