[alkonaut]

Lightroom does an excellent job of managing your files through a normal SQL database, but like any other app-centric view the abstraction breaks down at some point because users still have access to the files on disk. When you want to make edits using external tools you always get a feeling that you are swimming upstream.

What is needed is an OS level abstraction that still lets you access your data in files, but hides the actual physical organization of these files. The application interface to the file system shouldn't be a tree but a database/query like interface. Microsoft had great plans for this (already in Vista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS), but had to pull the plug on it. It hasn't reappeared in Win7 or 8. In a system like WinFS applications like Lightroom awould not have to manage its own SQLite database tables of your photos and their physical location. The query would go directly to the operating systems file database.