OT: Unix or UNIX or unix

[Derek Broughton]

Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-06-12 at 13:35 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> 
>> > What kind of database software do the ones you've worked with use?
>> 
>> The "IMS" above might have been a clue.  I don't know if it's true, but
>> the argument from big-iron users has always been that relational
>> databases run too slowly to do concurrent updates and retrievals on the
>> scale that you are doubtless dealing with if you're using an IBM
>> mainframe.
> 
> IMS is an old (30 plus years)

41, actually...  but then, DB2 is pushing 30 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_DB2).

> hierarchical database system.  If banks
> are still using it, I suspect it is because of all the transactional
> Cobol code sitting in front of it.  The cost of converting all that code
> is probably deemed too high.  After all it it works, why change it?

That's involved, but I assure you that's not the primary reason.  It's 
because IMS is still a darned fast database system, and you _can't_ make an 
RDBMS perform like that.  Why would you think that IMS has sat still for 
those 40 years, while IBM has been developing DB2, Oracle has been 
developing whatever it is they do, and even the F/LOSS community has 
produced Postgres (I shan't deign to mention MySQL - oops, I did)?
-- 
derek