ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (01/28/86)
A very major new application for PCs has arrived relatively un-noticed
with the recent advent of the multi-user lan oriented database system and,
apparently with it, one of the few remaining reasons for having multi-user
computers on the planet may be disappearing. The rationale is as follows:
given a lan with one AT class machine with a voice-coil disk (or a 3-server
or some such animal) whose only task in life is loading and unloading data
records, along with a system in which the actual computational load involved
in a dbase system was parceled out amongst 30 PCs, it seems more than likely
that such a system would outperform a system in which an ordinary dbase was
being used by 30 people on a super-mini or mainframe computer, and for a
fraction of the cost.
Clearly, the PC software of the past (DBASE III etc.) won't suffice for sucha use. Users of such a system would demand the multi-level securities, record-
locking features etc. that they were accustomed to on mainframe dbase environ-
ments. Several vendors are now attempting to market products with these
characteristics. Aside from network versions of DBASE III and RBASE, there is
the Lan-Datastore product which Xerox uses, and the Informa and Team-Up
packages sold by Unlimited Processing of Jacksonville, Fla.
I would appreciate hearing from anyone with any experience with these new
products, especially anyone having done any actual performance comparisons
between such a lan system and an equivalent system on a larger computer, as
well as anyone who has done any comparisons of the lan based products.
Replies may as well be posted to net.micro.pc, since others may be interested.
Ted Holden