I didn't mean to imply avoiding use of a database entirely, almost any DB system tasked with copying a few long strings around in a simple query won't perform much worse than a literal raw disk file.

Even just something like: CREATE TABLE calendar(id, user_id, blob)

Yes sure. I can imagine though that normally you'd also want to be able to query on details of an event. In which case having most things in columns would make sense because you can combine it with JOIN queries, etc.

Also, in the context of web applications, you probably already have a database and probably don't have persisted disks on your application servers, which then adds complexity to the file based scenario. In which case using blobs is a perfectly fine solution indeed.

Still you are right that in many cases, let's say a desktop application, you are probably better off reading directly from tens of files on disk rather than having to deal with the complexity of a database.

The same applies to vector databases. I read an article a few months ago that spoke about just storing vectors in files and looping through them instead of setting up a vector database and the performance was pretty much the same for the author's use case.

And then you quickly get to the not-author's-use cases where you have to start reinventing wheels, poorly.

You mean with the vectors or the other parts?

If I understood him correctly, I think this is where some language collections libraries ought to shine. PHP/Laravel collection or C# Link for exemple. Tell it how to load a record into the collection, add one liners for each criterias you want to define, and in a few dozen lines you're free to go.