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"A database is an organized collection of data."

By definition. First sentence in wiki. I don't know what are your definitions.

I could be misinterpreting but I believe a lookup table is more of a suggestion than anything.

It would be easier than for instance a hash table, or rather in networking, a deterministic solution is more common.

I'm obviously not a systems programmer though so I can't provide much else.

If you want to call a lookup table a database I'm ok with that.

But that means I'm writing my own databases at least a couple times a year. I'm not sure I'm okay with that.