TJMartin@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA (Tom Martin) (05/20/86)
A message appeared in the AI List a few weeks ago that summarized the Spang-Robinson report of April, 1985 -- Volume 2, No. 4 The Arthur D. Little personal financial planner, according to the summary, "uses databases residing on IBM mainframe." In fact, what we've done is develop a serial link that connects the Symbolics to an IBM 43xx running VM/CMS via the IBM 3705 communications controller. The point worth expanding on is that in this IBM/Symbolics symbiosis, the IBM is in charge, not the Symbolics. Yes, the planner "uses databases on the IBM mainframe," but only because the IBM user has (a) requested it, and (b) has the right access. The system uses the "virtual machine" concept of VM/CMS heavily. In effect, the Symbolics appears to be a separate virtual machine running on the 43xx. It responds to commands in real-time (instead of uploading/downloading files), however, the commands have to be pre-defined or rely on the EVAL on the Symbolics to return a meaningful answer. Neither the PFPS or this link are products of Arthur D. Little, Inc., as such. I hope to get a chance to talk about the IBM link at SLUG in a few weeks. Tom Martin Manager -- AI Systems Development