Flat-file database

Database stored as flat data Example of a flat-file model A flat-file database is a tabular flat file in which each record is semantically independent – can meaningfully be interpreted and manipulated independent of other records of the table. The term flat loosely refers to data that is record-based and sequential yet lacks more complicated aspects such as nesting, relationships and metadata (with the exception of column headers). Relationships can be inferred from the data, but the format does not provide special accommodations for relationships. Format A flat-file database may be stored as plain text or binary (not character encoded). When plain text, it is typically formatted as one record per line either as delimiter-separated or fixed-width. In delimiter-separated values files, the fields are separated by a character or string called the delimiter. Common variants are comma-separated values (CSV) where the delimiter is a comma, tab-separated values (TSV) where the delimiter is the tab character, space-separated values and vertical-bar-separated values (delimiter is |). If the delimiter is allowed inside a field, there needs to be a way to distinguish delimiters characters o