On Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:46:22 -0000 (UTC), Eli the Bearded wrote:

There's a different approach to "everything is a database" I recently
came across.

https://fzakaria.com/2026/08/23/your-executable-is-a-sqlite-database

Microsoft did try to go further. Back in the 1990s, I think, they had
something called ?project Cairo?, which turned the entire filesystem
into a database. This later morphed into ?WinFS?, which was one of
three major deliverables promised for Windows Vista.

None of the three made it to shipping.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Dave Yeo <dave.r.yeo@gmail.com> wrote:

Didn't Apple have a forked file system? Seems to me that Apple could >preserve OS/2's extended attributes (xttr's) over the LAN.

Yes. Apple had two forks, resource and data, so metadata was kept
separately.

When OS X came out, they started out using a "named fork" mechanism under
HFS+ but then later they moved to multiple different ways that atttributes
were stored and it all became messy and confusing because there were multiple legacy methods all being used.

As an aside, OS/2 started supporting extended attributes with the
release of the HPFS file system in 1988 (also supported in FAT) and used >them a lot in OS/2 v2+.

The more I work with stuff like this, the more I like the Unix world where everything is flat. VMS had a lot of very fancy filesystem features that
were great in a commercial data processing environment but were nothing but frustrating in a scientific computing environment.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sat, 29 Aug 2026 19:53:43 -0700, Dave Yeo wrote:

Didn't Apple have a forked file system?

The old MacOS did, not sure about the current one.

Seems to me that Apple could preserve OS/2's extended attributes
(xttr's) over the LAN.

There?s no standard for such things across different OSes, though.

As an aside, OS/2 started supporting extended attributes with the
release of the HPFS file system in 1988 (also supported in FAT) and
used them a lot in OS/2 v2+.

I gather that NTFS in Windows NT generalizes Apple?s original two-fork
concept to allow for multiple forks (called ?streams?, I think). Not
much software actually makes use of this, though.

On the Linux side, the Reiser4 filesystem was going to generalize this
concept even further, by unifying the concepts of files and
directories into one. So every filesystem item could be treated as a conventional file containing bytes of data with no predetermined
structure, and also as a directory containing further filesystem
items, which could be in their turn be accessed as both files and
directories, and so on.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In sci.electronics.design mm0fmf <none@invalid.com> wrote:

On 23/08/2026 20:07, Bertrand Sindri wrote:

In sci.electronics.design Scott Dorsey<kludge@panix.com> wrote:

Don Y<blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> wrote:

[I have all of the configuration details for my machines in a
series of relational databases. I had initially thought of
backporting this into the BSD distros that I use but realized that
effort would likely offend "historical purists". So, instead, I
have scripts that query the RDBMS and know how to "write" the
appropriate files that are then copied into each host.
My*current* project doesn't rely on such a kludge and tools
directly access the records in the appropriate tables.
Constrraints on the tables ensure that the tools need not validate
their input -- the RDBMS won't accept bad data and is "guaranteed"
to maintain the integrity of the data given to it. My, what a
novel idea...]

This is very much contrary to the Unix philosophy. If you like it,
that is fine but it's not Unixlike. But I am not sure why you are
taking this thread so far afield. --scott

You are noticing a common Don Y trolling method. Jump over to
sci.electronics.design and read through a sample of threads started
by Don Y and a sample of Don Y replies. You'll quickly notice
several very common patterns that are repeated over and over again.

I was quite impressed by the quality of his trolling.

It is subtle and skillfully done. Subtle enough that a great many on sci.electronics.design fall for it again and again, like moths to a
flame. They keep the troll fully fed, so it keeps returning for more.

I've seen similar styles by 1 or 2 others, "rudy meisner" springs to
mind. I'd not been following the thread for a while and was
impressed to see the scale of activity when I looked today. He's in
the virtual *plink*-list at the moment but yet to migrate to fully
*plinked*.

I've had the troll fully plonked for a while. Sadly, when the others
who fall for its trolling respond to its rants, then I still end up
having to wade through some of its trolling output in the quotes in
their replies.


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)