# Restructuring a Database (Advice on)

**URL:** <https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/restructuring-a-database-advice-on/79205>\
**Category:** DEVONthink\
**Tags:** devonthink3\
**Created:** [April 1, 2024, 8:54pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/restructuring-a-database-advice-on/79205 "2024-04-01T20:54:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![meowky](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@meowky](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/meowky)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2024, 2:03am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/restructuring-a-database-advice-on/79205/15 "2024-04-11T02:03:13Z")

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> [@ssawczyn](#):
>
> whatever works for me today is likely not going to work for me tomorrow and so this is going to be a constant work-in-progress

This is, in my opinion, the primary strength of tags over folders. It’s easier to modify the tags of a document than to deal with a scattered few of replicants. Merging tags is straightforward and effective maintenance. The fact that we have a tendency to over-tag things illustrates the flexibility of tags.

Tags are also more search-friendly. It is trivial to search for all items tagged _apple_, _banana_ and _candy_. Finding all items with a replicant in each of three folders, however, can be a bit more tricky.

A stark contrast is in the decimal system used by @Yclipse , which is folder-based, _single-threaded_, and optimized for manual retrieval of physical items. Decimal systems are fundamentally based on the premise that you can determine whether something (books, in the case of a DDC library) suits your needs _by its name/appearance alone_. They do not take advantage of modern computers’ capabilities to process and combine multiple threads of information.

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