Quote:
Originally Posted by DoctorOhh
Rumor has it that at some point before Calibre 0.4, when it was still known as libprs500 (pre 2008) the database of books was completely obfuscated and was changed to the open directory format we know today based on user input.
|
Originally, there was no directory structure, both the metadata and the files themselves were stored in the db. This was changed for the following reasons:
1) Performance of incremental backups with large libraries
2) The ability to have read-only access to your ebook files via the file system, if needed.
3) Robustness - database corruption now only leads to loss of metadata and even that can be recovered via the OPF files.
4) Large file limitations. Depending on file system and OS a single file can sometimes be restricted to a few GB in size.