delton@pro-carolina.UUCP (System Administrator) (05/22/89)
Network Comment: to #2884 by obsolete!pnet01!pro-nebulous!jim%nosc.mil
There are several reasons to have DA's in memory.
1) there's plenty of memory space available (i.e. 8 megabytes) so assuming
that memory will get cheaper in the long run there's little reason not to have
a lot of it sooner or later.
2) If DA's were loaded as needed you'd have to keep your system disk online
all the time.. this would be a hardship for floppy users.
3) You wouldn't be able to access DA's while the application was busy working
with open files as easily as you can do with DA's in memory.
4) Of course, memory resident DA's can be gotten to faster.
5) Memory resident DA's can handle background tasks behind the application but
only while they're in memory.
6) Memory resident DA's can often be accessed even if the operating system has
crashed. Handy for debugging types of DA's which would not be available if
disk i/o was required to execute them.
7) If you run out of memory because of too many DA's then get rid of the ones
you don't need. Keep them in a spare dir.. you can always copy them back and
reboot if you need a rarely used one that you'd rather not have taking up
memory if you use it only once a week or month.
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