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From: billo@cmx.npac.syr.edu (Bill O)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.databases
Subject: Unix machines for large databases
Message-ID: <428@cmx.npac.syr.edu>
Date: 3 May 88 03:44:51 GMT
Reply-To: billo@cmx.npac.syr.edu (Bill O'Farrell)
Organization: Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse NY
Lines: 33

Help! By Friday we need to know if there is a Unix-based box that
can work as a very high-performance data-base server.  Yes, there are a
million Unix boxes out there, but a data-base server has to be able to
cope with concurrent access by multiple (possibly several hundred)
users.  Simple file locking isn't good enough -- users should never
have to read "file locked" error messages.  Also, the disk performance
should be very good.

What is the nature of the data base?  Would you believe we're not
sure?  The amount of data will probably be very large, and it may or
may not be based on the relational model.  Why am I asking such a
vague question?  Because we are trying to develop corporate funding
for a project that is still in the jello stage of conception (you can
see it, and it glistens, but you still can't get a good grip on it).
What we want to do is to be able to talk about existing Unix-based
solutions to very large data sharing problems.

Names we know about:
 Gould -- fast disks, but is there data-sharing software?
 Most other Big Unix Boxes in the world -- ditto above comment.
 Tandem -- is this Unix based?
 Stratus -- is this Unix based,  is this a good database machine?
 
I'm nervous about posting this, because I expect every Unix box maker
to tell me about their great machines.  That's fine, but are there
proven very-large data-sharing/data-base applications on those
machines?  Are the disks very high performance?  SCSI ports probably
won't hack it.   We will consider both uniprocessor and multiprocessor
solutions.  Non-Unix solutions, while interesting, are not the topic
of this posting.  Please mail to me, don't post.  If others express an
interest, and if the response is informative, I'll post a summary.

Bill O'Farrell, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University
(billo@cmx.npac.syr.edu)