Mats.Sundvall@bmc.uu.se (Mats Sundvall) (07/18/89)
I have asked this before but... Is it possible to have the NNTP server add the news entries into the database when it is recieved instead of writing it to a file for later processing by NEWS/ADD. The advantage with this is a more interactive news network with the entry available for reading directly when recieved by the system. I suppose some performance will be gained as we do not have to write all these temporary files. By the way. If you look into the code there used to be a lot of temporary files written by the news system. Is this really necessary. On a high volume news machine, disk accesses will be a limiting factor even without reading and writing all these temp files. -- Mats Sundvall Biomedical Center +46/18174583 University of Uppsala Mats.Sundvall@BMC.UU.SE Sweden psi%24020019700620::MATS
SLOANE@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (Bob Sloane) (07/21/89)
In article <1736@bmc.uu.se>, Mats.Sundvall@bmc.uu.se (Mats Sundvall) writes: > Is it possible to have the NNTP server add the news entries into > the database when it is recieved instead of writing it to a file for > later processing by NEWS/ADD. I agree this would be a good thing to do, but I doubt that it will happen. The problem is that there is no method of synchronizing two processes updateing the database files concurently. Currently, NEWS works reasonably well because the vast majority of the database updating is done by a single job. Real, live NEWS readers just don't post things that often, so it doesn't happen very often that two processes try to update the database at the same time. If the NNTP server also updated the database, there would be more problems. Actually, it does post articles directly when the POST command is used. > The advantage with this is a more interactive news network with the entry > available for reading directly when recieved by the system. Couldn't you just run the batch job to do the updates more frequently and get much the same effect? It doesn't seem like a big problem if it takes an extra 10 minutes for something to appear. If it is really important that you see the articles as soon as possible, why not set up the group as served on the remote system, and read it directly from there? +-------------------+-------------------------------------+------------------+ | Bob Sloane \Internet: SLOANE@KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU/Anything I said is | | Computer Center \ BITNET: SLOANE@UKANVAX.BITNET / my opinion, not my | | University of Kansas\ AT&T: (913) 864-0444 / employer's. | +-----------------------+-----------------------------+----------------------+
gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) (08/01/89)
>In article <1736@bmc.uu.se>, Mats.Sundvall@bmc.uu.se (Mats Sundvall) writes: >> Is it possible to have the NNTP server add the news entries into >> the database when it is recieved instead of writing it to a file for >> later processing by NEWS/ADD. > >I agree this would be a good thing to do, but I doubt that it will happen. The >problem is that there is no method of synchronizing two processes updateing >the database files concurently. Currently, NEWS works reasonably well because >the vast majority of the database updating is done by a single job. Real, >live NEWS readers just don't post things that often, so it doesn't happen very >often that two processes try to update the database at the same time. If the >NNTP server also updated the database, there would be more problems. Actually, >it does post articles directly when the POST command is used. The problem is not one of synchronization - synchronization is handled by use of RMS locks in records in both database files. The problem is simply one of the complexity of the changes which are necessary - the environment of the ADD procedures is not easily imported into the NNTP_SERVER process. Geoff Huston gih900@csc.anu.oz.au