Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!haven!vrdxhq!dev!dgis!jkrueger From: jkrueger@dgis.dtic.dla.mil (Jon) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: 64-bit addresses Message-ID: <780@dgis.dtic.dla.mil> Date: 3 Mar 90 18:33:58 GMT References: <1786@gannet.cl.cam.ac.uk> <1990Mar2.232735.6071@world.std.com> Organization: Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), Alexandria VA Lines: 29 bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: >The 3090 still provides fairly awesome I/O for the price... >...It probably still is a cost-effective database >transaction machine for very large databases Barry, It's folklore in the database world that things are as you say...but nobody ever seems to have any numbers. It's my opinion that you're right, but does anyone have any facts? It should also be noted that good DBMSs avoid i/o's at very reasonable (and these days, affordable) costs in computation and memory. The basic tools are query optimizing, access methods, cacheing, intelligent buffering, indices, readahead, data clustering, deferred writes. The next generation will add optimizing placement of data on disk (and disk array, yum yum!). At that point the bottleneck will be bus throughput, which I suppose brings us back to dead whales. Or will Futurebus solve this? Actually, I suppose that just brings me back to my first point: how big is the gap? Measurement of real operations on very large databases using currently available DBMS on KM and big iron would be very interesting indeed. Might even help free the masses. -- Jon -- Jonathan Krueger jkrueger@dtic.dla.mil uunet!dgis!jkrueger The Philip Morris Companies, Inc: without question the strongest and best argument for an anti-flag-waving amendment.