Traditional Database vs Solana Accounts Comparison

Concept Traditional Database Solana Accounts Data Location Rows in tables on a centralized server Accounts on a distributed ledger across validators Schema Defined by the database (SQL DDL, document schema) Defined by the owning program; stored as raw bytes in the account's data field Access Control Application-level auth (SQL roles, app middleware) Enforced by the runtime: only the owning program can modify an account, and only with the required signer(s) Cost of Storage Server/cloud hosting fe