Comment by rschmukler

In my mind there are a few reasons, but indeed it could definitely be implemented with a flat file. Sometimes you aren't guaranteed write-access to a file on the system, especially if you're using a PAAS like Heroku. That also complicates things if you want to build something to view/edit the data in an isolated instance. These are just the reasons that come to the top of my head, but in reality you're right, this could be finessed to be done with just a flat file.