Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!drn.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
From: "Mark D Powell" <Mark.Powell@eds.com>
Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory
Subject: Re: Flat Query
Date: 14 Oct 2005 08:55:22 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Lines: 12
Message-ID: <1129305322.558224.22640@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>
References: <1129117652.410549.169640@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
   <1129170504.862928.236830@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>
   <1129225535.450679.279390@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.85.50.1
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
X-Trace: posting.google.com 1129305327 2699 127.0.0.1 (14 Oct 2005 15:55:27 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:55:27 +0000 (UTC)
In-Reply-To: <1129225535.450679.279390@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
User-Agent: G2/0.2
X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
Injection-Info: z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com; posting-host=192.85.50.1;
   posting-account=J7QqBQwAAABTieek3RP_669Gs2iATWzr
Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu comp.databases.theory:34028

The term 'flat file' has been in use for more than 20 years.  It was
generally applied to files accessed in a sequential manner as opposed
to being accessed via direct access or ISAM, Indexed Sequential Acess
Method, files.  Over time, especially, in the non-mainframe world the
term was usually used a synonym for a text file.

In the database world the term usually refers to OS files that are used
to feed data to a load process or hold the results of an extract
process.  In other words, ETL, operations.

HTH -- Mark D Powell --