[GNC] Database storage

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 9/19/2024 11:16 AM, Roberts K wrote:
> In my experience the amount of data is relatively small (even for thousands
> of records)

A bit of historical perspective is needed, particularly because our 
heads have not yet absorbed a fundamental change in technology.

Back in my working days, the IBM 3350's (hard drives) held somewhat over 
300 mbytes each and our programs on the mainframe had about 10 mbytes 
core (the OS took about 6 mbytes from every program's virtual space.

So a large database might span three drives and only a tiny bit of it at 
a time could fit into core.

Now this Lenovo work station I am sitting at is ancient. The W541's were 
the last of the W series. Still, this little thing I v=can pick up and 
carry around has HUNDREDS of times as much capacity as those three 3350 
hard drives and it has many gbytes of core, enough to load into core 
that entire database several times.

We (NOW) load entire databases into core because we can. We didn't 
before because we couldn't (and the ones that did work that way could 
only handle small databases)

Michael