How does it work for searching though? If I just have my "freespace" file and my pointers to records, does a search for some piece of user requested data have to hit every record or is there a hash somewhere for the data contained in the record? You don't mention it in your description.
It seems that the biggest advantage to a relational DB is that the syntax for accessing it is well known, SQL. It has a human read-able interface and while sometimes whonky to work with for complex operations, it provides the simplest cross-platform way to access data. I don't need to know which data blocks hold the data, I just ask the database for them "SELECT slashdotid, name FROM users where slashdotid 20000"... and I get rows of data.
Could I just read it from a file? Yes. Would it be simpler? Maybe. But what if I have 200001 records, then I have to do some magic sorting in my program, and I have to manage memory for them, and disk space, etc. It is simpler to let the DB handle that mess and I just ask for the data I need.
It breaks up the process of programming into data storage and data manipulation/presentation. DB's for storage, my bad python for manipulation and presentation.
--Donald