[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Paul Sture]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:02:04 +0000, ChrisQ wrote:

> I was just interested in why such a scheme was designed. At the time,
> the world of computing was proprietary, with little standardisation and
> manufacturers were free to design systems as they saw fit. The only
> reason that I can see for DEC to have built RMS capability into the file
> system was because it eased computing and memory requirements elsewhere,
> and / or that that they had applications in mind that needed the
> functionality.

Not at all.  When we were shopping for an upgrade in the late 1970s we 
were already using a system which supported indexed, relative and 
sequential files, and we expected to see that on every manufacturers' kit.

In other words: customer demand.

ICL had ISAM support, IBM's offering was VSAM, and the list went on.  If 
you didn't need a fully fledged database these were quite adequate.  Even 
if you went for a full on database, these "less sophisticated" data 
storage methods were much more appropriate in many cases.

-- 
Paul Sture