S3 is files, but not a filesystem (via) Cal Paterson helps some concepts click into place for me: S3 imitates a file system but has a number of critical missing features, the most important of which is the lack of partial updates. Any time you want to modify even a few bytes in a file you have to upload and overwrite the entire thing. Almost every database system is dependent on partial updates to function, which is why there are so few databases that can use S3 directly as a backend storage mechanism.
Recent articles
- Two publishers and three authors fail to understand what "vibe coding" means - 1st May 2025
- Understanding the recent criticism of the Chatbot Arena - 30th April 2025
- Qwen 3 offers a case study in how to effectively release a model - 29th April 2025