[Info-vax] C... the only winning move is not to play...

[David Froble]

Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote:

> Typical RMS usages proves the right choice was made. Records are frequently, dominantly, read in order. Many IOs were saved over the decades.

Ya know, I'm going to disagree with you on this point.

Perhaps all the usage you've seen might agree, but my experiences are 
that most usage is random.  Specifically, the usage when response time 
is most critical, when users are actually doing something.  For such, a 
sequential scan is rarely performed.  YMMV.

I've also seen cases where keys are changing all the time.

Caviet:

If you're scanning the entire file, then yes, but many times you're not 
then looking for the records in primary key order, you're sorting the 
records on some other data.  For reports and such, performance really 
isn't as important, if they are being run in batch or background.