Filecentric

Filecentric is an adjective used in information technology to describe approaches, systems, or philosophies that organize, store, and access information primarily as files within a hierarchical file system rather than as structured records in a database or as objects in an object store. In such environments, the file is the principal unit of data, and metadata such as path, name, timestamps, permissions, and checksums are central to management and retrieval. Content management and digital asset management systems are commonly described as file-centric when their primary interface and workflows revolve around files and their paths.

Characteristics include reliance on path-based organization, versioned files, external indices for content search, and integration with standard file system semantics across platforms. While file-centric designs emphasize human-readable organization and interoperability with existing tools, they may depend on separate indexing and metadata repositories to enable fast search and structured queries.

Contexts and applications include traditional file systems (for example, NTFS or ext4), content management, media libraries, backup systems, and some forms of version control. In many settings, file-centric storage is used in conjunction with database or metadata-centric layers to enable robust search and policy enforcement.

Compared with database-centric designs that store data as records with defined schemas, file-centric systems excel in simplicity and portability but may incur overhead for metadata management and large-scale querying. Advantages include human readability, ease of migration, and broad tool compatibility, while disadvantages involve slower content queries, fragmentation, reliance on external indexing, and potential metadata drift.