Read "Distributed Systems" by Sape Mullender (Score 2)

Section 14.2.2 Has a discussion of File Systems versus Databases written by M. Satyanarayanan (of AFS and CODA fame). He says that although file systems and databases have much in common, there are several areas in which they differ conceptually including encapsulation, naming, and the ratio of search time to usage time. Basically file systems are appropriate when there is high temporaly locality, while databases are used in situations where there is little locality and concurrent read and write sharing of data at a fine grain level are required.