[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[David Froble]

ChrisQ wrote:
> On 08/23/12 00:45, Howard S Shubs wrote:
>> In article<zCQYr.12412$7h.10088 at fx23.am4>, ChrisQ<meru at devnull.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps you could answer the question: Why RMS and on disk structure
>>> was built into the filesystem at the time, to understand why it may
>>> not be so relevant now.
>>
>> Directory trees are still relevant.  File structure *can* be relevant.
>>
> 
> 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

After discussing the issue for a while, and forcing myself to look at it 
in detail, I'd object with the claim that RMS is part of the file system.

That RMS will read, write, create, and perform other operations on files 
is not in dispute.  But, what part of the underlaying file system really 
cares about RMS?  That some VMS utilities will determine that they are 
working on a RMS file and perform accordingly is also not in dispute. 
But, some of those same utilities will also work on non-RMS files.

If anything, the VMS file system is more transparent that what you 
(mistakenly) claim is the lowest level of file access in Unix.  Disks 
have cylinder(s), tracks, and sectors.  Laying some structure over that, 
(Format, Init) will define the smallest unit of storage on a disk.  In 
many cases, it's some multiple of 512 byte "blocks".  So, when a disk 
transfer takes place, it at a minimum transfers the smallest unit of 
storage.

So, if I/O on VMS reads in this unit, and presents it to the user, 
that's rather transparent.  From your claims, Unix presents a stream of 
bytes to the user, which means Unix reads the unit and then transforms 
it.  Not so transparent.

So, what do we have here?  It appears that an attitude of "Unix is right 
and proper", and "this is the way Unix does I/O so it must be right and 
proper" is in effect.