Aucbvax.2295
fa.works
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works
Wed Jul 15 08:38:33 1981
Reliablity
>From BHYDE@BBNG Wed Jul 15 08:36:51 1981
Folks,

   There are very few new ideas that computing has had to date.
The keystroke backup file is only the editor instantiation of
a very old idea; double entry bookkeeping.  An idea that some
have blamed all capitalism on.  As each transaction occurs in
any organization it is recorded in two places, the journal and
the account book that it is related to.  These two sets of books
are stored in separate places if at all possible and either set
can be used to reconstruct the other.  This is a very important
reliability mechanism since it is the only one that is acceptable
to accounting organizations.  As the only "certified" mechanism
it is the only primitive available for most commercial systems
to achieve reliability.  Thus the terms audit trail or journaling
are very popular in commercial product offerings.

Ben Hyde.