[bryanlarsen]

The description of flat-file database seems too restrictive. In my experience, flat files with fixed record lengths and no delimiters were far more common than variable-length delimited formats like CSV. File sizes were often much larger than computer memory size, so random read & write was necessary.

[kps]

Yes. The origin of the flat-file database is fixed-format unit record equipment¹, predating computers. COBOL is essentially a language designed for processing fixed-format files.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_record_equipment

[imchairmanm]

That's definitely a good point. I'll try to update the article to reflect that soon. Thanks for the feedback!