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Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin,news.sysadmin
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Why are news articles separate files?
Message-ID: <1988Aug26.160040.22326@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <471@icus.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 88 16:00:40 GMT

In article <471@icus.UUCP> lenny@icus.UUCP (Lenny Tropiano) writes:
>Excuse me if this has been discussed before... but with new standards
>in Netnews software being developed (ie. News 3.0 and Cnews) why are
>each and every news article keep in separate files within separate
>directories?

The simple answer is "compatibility".  In the case of the C News crew,
we really didn't have a choice, since we didn't plan to rewrite all the
news readers.  3.0 has been a bit more ambitious, but even there it's
a substantial win if old news readers continue to work, since there are
several of them and it's a lot of work to replace them all.

In truth, we thought about the matter at some length beforehand, and
basically decided that we couldn't think of any new way that would be
*enough* better to justify it.

>Wouldn't a database solution be more apropos?  For example, store each
>article after unbatched in a database (possibly within the directory
>structure)?  This will eliminate the problem with i-nodes decreasing to
>nothingness.  Granted there are somethings that would be slowed down. (eg.
>expires)  

Aside from inode conservation, exactly what is the win in this?  We could
not see any in particular.  Our solution to the inode problem is to have
plenty of inodes -- they are not expensive.  Performance was THE big issue
with us, and the 3.0 crew aren't ignoring it either.

The existing scheme, although arguably crude, has a lot going for it.  It
is simple.  It is robust.  It is amenable to manipulation by the standard
Unix tools, instead of requiring a whole new set of its own.  It is fairly
efficient for the sorts of things that are done often.  These are important
advantages.
-- 
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu