my try to start a theoretical discussion about a (really) new type of file system

[Mark Stier <kalium@gmx.de>]

Hello,

Is it basically a good idea to use a RDBMS-like file system instead of ext2?

Advantages:

1. The structure used to display the file system content is
user-definable. Therefore such a filesystem could be very nicely integrated
into or merged with graphical X desktops. The file tree isn't too useful there.
2. No need to distribute big file collections to more
directories.
3. Fast and instant search index plus possibility to search files by more
criteria.
4. File attributes may be added as needed, eg. "Author" or...
5. Database service is directly integrated into the system.
6. No PATH variables any more. The file system database just looks for binaries
the user can execute.
7. No partition problems any more. The file system database just needs to know
which partitions it can use. If one disables one or more partitions, it will try
to move its/their contents to other partitions.
8. Such a file system database would enable us to distribute ONE file system
over a whole cluster. Imagine 20 computers and each having 10 GB of disk
storage. We could handle files with sizes up to 200 GB.
9. Automatic speed improvement. The file system could analyze the usable
partitions and could move around its data based upon internal usage statistics
so that performance is being improved.
10. Dynamic use of space in a cluster-distributed file system - just like the
linux kernel uses free RAM as cache/buffer (-> some sort of invisible nfscache).
11. We could have a RDBMS system distributed to many computers -- this could
distribute the load produced by heavy RDBMS serving.
12. Additionaly one could implement RAID-0/1/5-like techniques on a whole
cluster -- but without partitioning limits.

Disadvantage(s):

1. Speed? I'm not sure of this one. I can't imagine why an indexed search
should be slower than a lookup in ext2 inode tables. And sequential reading
should be faster due to point 9 and 10.

This would be a significant improvement along to projects like BEOWULF (IMHO).

The main reason why I think of such a "redical" change is that the hierarchical
file system is really old. It would be another step towards the merging of OS,
GUI and Networking. Another improvement over Windows or Mac or...

Regards,

Mark