File System VS Database

File System:

A file system is what your operating system in your computer has for storing and organizing the data in files and folders.

Database:

A database is simply an organized collection of related data, typically stored on disk, and accessible by possibly many concurrent users.

Co-relation between File System and Database:

A file system is a more unstructured data store for storing arbitrary, probably unrelated data.

The file system is more general, and databases are built on top of the general data storage services provided by file systems.

When can we prefer DB (We can't achieve below with File System):

  Data Normalization (Remove Redundancy) – A well designed database schema can reduce storage requirements on the target storage media by reducing duplicate data.

  Transaction Support – Atomic transactions guarantee complete failure or success of an operation. This includes automatic recovery of the database to a transaction consistent point in the event of an abnormal termination of the application (system crash, power loss, etc.).

  Concurrent Access – Many users can access data concurrently with out any issues.

  Flexibility, Expandability, Scalability – A database system can scale easily to larger data sets.

  Quick Access – Databases allow indexing based on any attribute (i.e. SQL columns). This helps fast retrieval of data, based on the indexed attribute. This is an important advantage, as the data increases it provides a more predictable query response time.

  Interoperability – We can connect through different third-party tools to access and analyze data.

  Relationship between Objects: We can easily create the relationships between the objects using which we will maintain the database consistency

When can we avoid DB:

  Database is small with a simple structure

  Applications are simple, special purpose and relatively static.

  Concurrent, multi user access to data is not required.

  Need a quick prototype to demonstrate feasibility

  Need an easy way to see the data without having to write a program

  Customers don't want to install a DBMS and want to get online quickly