Re: What is a FLAT FILE ?
From: David Cressey <david_at_dcressey.com>
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 13:06:57 GMT
Message-ID: <RtYT8.48$0U1.5734_at_petpeeve.ziplink.net>
Date: Mon, 01 Jul 2002 13:06:57 GMT
Message-ID: <RtYT8.48$0U1.5734_at_petpeeve.ziplink.net>
> What is a FLAT FILE ?
>
> A FLAT FILE is just one table organized easily into fields and rows.
I would have defined it differently: A flat file is a sequence of records, all of a single record type.
In this definition, files that contained multiple record types would not be
flat. An example
might be header records and detail records.
> A database is either flat or relational.
Hierarchical and Network databases were stored in files, before the advent
of relational databases.
These files were not referred to as "flat files" at the time.
Received on Mon Jul 01 2002 - 15:06:57 CEST