[net.unix-wizards] Wither goest UNIX?

dale (05/27/82)

Douglas Price is incorrect in some of his assertions regarding UNIX.
The best way to implement a database mgmt. capability in UNIX is NOT
to build it on top of the UNIX filesystem, but to build it using a
"raw" character device portion of a disk. This gives complete control
over the order of the writes and reads with DMA directly to user space.
The systems we build at BTL Columbus all use such a mechanism. Some of
the systems have a special driver in the kernel to allocate and
deallocate sections of this device, others are implemented entirely in
user space.

Doug's comments about pipes are also wrong. For some time now fstat
has returned info describing how much is in a pipe. And it is certainly
possible to use alarm() to time out of a pipe read. Hence the read CAN
be aborted.

dale (05/27/82)

I forgot to sign my name to my followup to Douglas Price's article. Sorry.
		Dale DeJager
		BTL Columbus
		cbosg!dale