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From: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Usenet netnews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Mainframes vs micros for database applications
Message-ID: <1417@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sat, 3-Jan-87 20:32:36 EST
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.1417
Posted: Sat Jan  3 20:32:36 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Jan-87 23:37:22 EST
References: <653@imsvax.UUCP> <196@unisoft.UUCP> <2839@gitpyr.gatech.EDU> <13905@glacier.STANFORD.EDU>
Reply-To: tim@tomcat.UUCP (Tim Kay)
Organization: California Institute of Technology
Lines: 37

Organization : California Institute of Technology
Keywords: databases, mainframes, Tandem, IBM
From: tim@tomcat.Caltech.Edu (Tim Kay)
Path: tomcat!tim

In article <13905@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.UUCP (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
>      One problem with mainframe databases is that IBM's main offering,
>IMS, is single-thread.  Somewhere everything has to go through one hole 
>to make the locking, logging, and fault recovery work right.
>The biggest IBM CPUs available are not big enough to handle the entire
>transaction volume of a major money center bank
>
> [deleted]
>
>      If one were very clever, it would be possible to build on-line
>database and transaction processing systems out of many small machines
>in such a way as to get around this problem.  Someone has been.  Tandem.

John,

Your information on Tandem was fascinating.  I am no expert in databases,
and I was supporting my arguments off the cuff.  I was hoping that somebody
would prove me wrong because IBM has used the "might makes right" idiom too
long.

What type of computers does Tandem use?  Could you estimate for us
how each of their nodes compares to a current day AT or Compaq 386?

I have maintained all along that IBM would some day lose the mainframe
market due to their crufty old software.  Perhaps, the day of reckoning
is closer than I thought.

Timothy L. Kay				tim@csvax.caltech.edu
Department of Computer Science
Caltech, 256-80
Pasadena, CA  91125