Inspired by blog articles from Michael Dominic K. and Henri Bergius, in part one of this series I touched on the conflict between the order of databases and the freedom of files. The latter are fiercely hoarded and guarded by information workers who in many cases don’t really care about the object so much as the information it conveys. But what are files, and why does this issue of managing their chaos even exist?
The modern electronic file is a data or readable text object meant to store and/or convey useful information. It can constitute one or more records (I’ll even consider a graphic image as a record in this context). The beauty of a file is its common independence from the confines of enterprise data stores. This is especially true in the case of files based on open source and highly-accepted commercial formats; they are often accessed by a multitude of viewers or renderers.
But that independence comes at a cost. The further a file object lives from a data management system, the more risk it can introduce and encounter. Versioning, detail accuracy and unapproved copying are just some of the risks. Files also consume storage space often disproportionate to the value they add, especially as they are wastefully replicated in myriad emails and hard drives. The cheapness of onsite storage has helped exacerbate this, removing old constraints that once encouraged conservation over ease of access.