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From: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.database
Subject: Re: A variant of the streams idea
Message-ID: <372@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Dec-85 17:16:04 EST
Article-I.D.: ncr-sd.372
Posted: Thu Dec 19 17:16:04 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Dec-85 06:00:43 EST
References: <2416@ukma.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 20
Xref: watmath net.unix-wizards:16185 net.database:155

In article <2416@ukma.UUCP> david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) writes:
>I just finished reading dmr's streams article from the BSTJ of last year,
> ....
>Could one use a variant of this to provide "funny" kinds of files?
>
>What I mean is, ISAM is merely a protocol for using a file, right?
>So to use a database "properly", open the file and push a <something>
>onto the file which does the indexing/etc.  And you would still
>be able to use the file in a "raw" mode for low-level patching, etc.

I spoke to DMR after he presented his paper and suggested something
similar.  In fact, if you look at it closely, a buffered filesystem is
just a specialized interface pushed on top of the raw filesystem.  I
would like to see the whole stream mechanism generalized so that I could
push a stream module in front of \any/ file, not just a tty file.  This
seems to be a simplification and unification of the concept of file
accessing, and Unix is renouned for the simplification and unification
of concepts, so why not?
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo    Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA