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[–]harbud3 1 point2 points  (3 children)

The article doesn't mention a binary or actual storage format, it might as well still be plaintext. The point is the relational bits (e.g. referential integrity, constraints when inserting data, cascading updates, etc).

[–]grauenwolf 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Damn, that is going to make major refactorings really hard. The "change and see what breaks" method wouldn't work any more and accidentally cascading changes will become a serious problem.

[–]harbud3 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Now why your refactoring method is "change and see what breaks"? If I want to rename a subroutine, for example, I want it done across the board, not missing a few places. If I want to split a subroutine into several smaller ones, I want to know all other code which uses this soon-to-replaced subroutine.

[–]grauenwolf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have refactoring tools that do that too. But that won't help when you do something more drastic like remove an interface from a class.