[MUD-Dev] Player run reputation system

[Jon Lambert]

J Todd Coleman wrote:
 
> Strangely, the best performance would probably come out of using a
> hierarchical dataset, like VSAM or ISAM (or Unidata).. but that's
> crazy cobol stuff, so no mud developer would touch it with a 10ft
> pole. (and to be honest, I don't really blame them.)

Actually the Unices DBM family and VSAM are really quite similar
conceptually.  So yes you could say many mud developer's are really
exploring very similar low level storage systems.  So the
performance characteristics are similar.

The utter shame is that relational systems on *nices have gotten
quite a _deserved_ bad rep for data integrity (outside of Oracle
that is).  And relational systems overall have gotten an
undeservedly bad reputation on performance issues much of which is
mythmaking based on early versions of those systems.  The wide
spread use MS-Access on small systems hasn't helped matters. :-/

VSAM performs so well that it's functionality is the core of IBM's
DB2 (Though I'm not sure what low level format DB2's PC version
uses).  We use VSAM with PL/1, BAL, Fortran, EZtrieve, C as well as
Cobol.  The way DB2 uses VSAM is not the same way as your average
application programmer uses it.  DB2 uses a lower level interface
that is not formally documented.  There's a lot of reused code
there.  So you could say VSAM is still quite alive and kicking under
the covers.

Now ISAM has definitely gone the way of the dinosaur.  The hard
limitations are far too restrictive for today's large data
applications (hmm... not dissimilar to the limitations of vanilla
NDBM on *nices).  Anyways the last three shops I've been in have had
ISAM removed entirely from SYSGEN.

BTW, I just landed yet another contract converting a BAL UFAM system
to a mixed BAL and C DB2 system, so that's how I'll be spending the
next year or two.  UFAM was a file storage format developed jointly
by IBM engineers and a particular bank customer.  It was later
distributed and licensed by the customer to a whole host of banks
and insurance companies.  It's fairly rare and completely
unsupported.  It is highly dependent on the physical characteristics
(cylinder/sector structure) of various IBM disk storage units.  Gah!
It's a nasty bit of BAL spaghetti but it kicked VSAM in the pants
until the 90's when smart file-caching became common.  I can't
complain because knowing some of the older technologies around is
often even more profitable than knowing the latest technologies.
:-P

--
--* Jon A. Lambert - TychoMUD        Email:jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com *--
--* Mud Server Developer's Page <http://tychomud.home.netcom.com> *--
--* If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself.*--
 
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