TurboDB supports two different types of databases. Directory databases are folders on a hard disk where all TurboDB database objects reside in different files. Database directories have been supported ever since TurboDB exists.

A single-file database is one single file which contains all database objects of the database. Such a database file has the default extension of *.tdbd. Single-file databases are supported as of version 4.0. Single-file databases have the advantage of being very easy to deploy or just to copy and move around on your hard disk. The advantage of database directories is, that they are slightly faster and that you can share tables between different databases.

Single-file databases are implemented using a virtual file system layer by dataweb. This layer maps the database objects either to different files in a database directory or to a single database file. dataweb offers a tool - the dataweb Compound File Explorer - which can open such database files and show the content. You may also move database objects from and to the database file. This is a way to convert a directory-based database to a single-file database or vice versa as well.

While TurboDB Native supports both of these database types, TurboDB Managed can only work with single-file databases.