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    6. Normalization, 7. See the link, 8. Read up on fault-tolerance. Oh, and before you get sucked up into the NoSQL craze, learn about SQL databases; get to know them on their own terms. You will understand. If you're just talking about simple configuration data, JSON may be all you need. But there are many other types of data out there besides program settings. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 3:04
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    As far as it not being safe to have two programs editing the data at once, well, that's partly why databases exist. If you ever have this need (and some or all of the other needs I mentioned), you're going to be very glad that you don't have to re-invent all this. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 3:07
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    @Dokkat It's not necessary, nothing is. If your approach works for you, by all means go for it. I should mention however that most half decent rdbms support memory based storages, you can load everything you need in memory when your app wakes up (as you already do), and query them as you would a typical database (keeping all the benefits Robert mentioned). Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 3:13
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    To put it another way, sometimes you need a tent, but sometimes you need a house, and building a house is a whole different ball game than pitching a tent. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 3:13
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    @Dokkat when people are referring to crashes, they mean stuff like... your CPU blew up halfway through writing your "database" file. What happens now? Most likely your file is corrupt / unreadable (at least, it may no longer conform to your own format), and you need to restore form a backup (while most "real" DBs would only lose the last transaction). Of course, you can write code to make it handle this. Then you can write code for all the other stuff. And then you realise you've spent 6 months writing a DB, which you could have used from the start, for very little effort. Commented Mar 14, 2013 at 6:44