Messages in this thread | | | Date | 07 Nov 1999 09:10:00 +0200 | From | (Kai Henningsen) | Subject | Re: Patent |
| |
htw6966@htw-dresden.de (Konrad Rosenbaum) wrote on 06.11.99 in <Pine.LNX.4.10.9911061715290.2310-100000@pinguin.local>:
> On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, Edward S. Marshall wrote: > > > On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, Joe wrote: > > > Does the linux kernel use a database? (retorical q here) I think > > > not .. thus this patent is irrelevant to what is being done in > > > kernel code. > > > > What would you call a filesystem, if not a database? :-) > > Just a filesystem or Pre-Database :-) > > Databases have mandatory transaction management. Means if process A > accesses data fields process B has to wait till A finished (except both do > reads only).
So any database without multi-user support doesn't count as a database? Whereas a simple index like modern libdb2 does?
Somehow I don't think so.
>On some better databases you may work around transaction > management - as on better filesystems you may activate transaction > management (by locking files).
My definition says that some better databases *have* transaction management (which, incidentally, is *not* primarily about multi-user capabilities, but about commit and rollback).
> Not that I ever wanted mandatory t.m.... but I remember an angry professor > who didn't like the idea of filesystems compared with databases - don't > run into the same trouble :-)
The filesystem *is* a database - a *specialized* database. A typical Unix fs, for example, allows for exactly one type of key (a pathname) and has only BLOBs for non-key data fields (the file data). OTOH, an AS/400 file system is just a view onto a relational database. (Even the active processes are in that database.)
MfG Kai
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |