One of the many enjoyable things about databases is that they generally try to separate how data is represented internally (say on disk) from how it is used. To the point that it has become the norm to not even store the data on the same hardware that is running the queries. Databases have gotten so good at this, that the term is almost misleading now. “Base” suggests something rigid, without which the data would slip away. But the data is always there, just bits on a nameless hard disk. The str...