• Fabiano (unregistered)

    The best DB ever... but in this way it looks far too much OOstuff, there is too much abstraction in the middle! ;-)

  • (cs) in reply to RHuckster
    RHuckster:
    Ladies and gentlemen, I think we've found a GREAT product for SpectateSwamp's showdown!

    I'd forgotten about him - the living April Fool all year round. He really was something else, a human WTF

  • Jason (unregistered)

    I did a case-fixed benchmark that showed exceptional performance in our customer-oriented business intelligence multi-million dollar solution. I will strongly recommend this to our CEO on the next board meeting as the new paradigm-shifting award-winning design pattern industry standard.

    Thanks for not protecting this one with a patent.

    Jason Jackson, CTO

  • YourName (unregistered) in reply to Ike

    Just keep in mind the tradeoff that your writes may be slightly slower.

  • Morry (unregistered)

    so you invented TPFDF for the non-mainframe?

  • Wyrd (unregistered)

    Happily, I figured out it was a joke in paragraph four, "Depending on what you’re looking at, . . . molecules. And those of course break down to atoms, . . . the world just simply doesn’t work like that."

    The text was, of course, scientifically accurate, but it was just too damn pointless-frothy-wordy-rambling. Geeks don't talk like that unless they've had a few too many or they're attempting to deceive. That made my BS detector switch on, and I decided now would be a really good time to check the article's post date. ;-)

    The article was good for some chuckles. The end of the article is good for making it actually seem plausible. Seriously, though, is it even possible to bypass all that virtualization jazz in the hard drive controller these days? If so, wtf do you do when you get a read error? See, with the HDC operating in its role, it can actually save you from having to deal with many disk errors as it will silently move your piece of data out of the starting-to-fail sector before it gets completely unreadable.

    Btw, I think that would be the fatal flaw with your (joke) proposed APDB. Physical Read Errors. Yeah, now that's the Real World. Let's see your database model that! On second thought, let's not. Heh.

    -- Furry cows moo and decompress.

  • Lunkwill (unregistered)

    I particularly like the "Retreive" method. People might find it wierdly named but think about it: would HTTP ever have reached its popularity without the "Referer" header? Of course not.

  • (cs)

    To me, these approaches seem inadequate to meet the real zero-time requirements of modern applications. I think new database designs need to focus on some of the upcoming negative delay technologies.

    When these technologies are perfected then query complexity and storage strategy become irrelevant. No matter how long the request requires, a request sent to the appropriate time in the past will have the results ready at 0 time in the present.

    (For example: To use a query that requires 100 execution seconds, just send a message to the database engine with a -100 second delay. Then use the result, which is now ready on demand.)

    Determining the proper delay might seem a challenge but is simply solved. First of all, the database engine keeps a record of the runtime of each query. The requestor sends a request with a +10000 second delay to the database engine; the engine looks up the actual time required by the indicated query, and responds with the required negative delay interval by using a -10000-n (n=lookup time) second delay. The requestor then uses the returned negative delay to start the desired query.

  • Bill Grogan (unregistered) in reply to Coyne
    Coyne:
    To use a query that requires 100 execution seconds, just send a message to the database engine with a -100 second delay.
    OK, nice idea but two problems:

    1. A 64-bit CPU can't send more than 6.4 seconds into the past, and then only if it has a hyperhypervisor. Obviously, you set up a recursive bucket brigade to keep sending it farther and farther back until it hits the target. (Those who wish to learn about time-travel recursion must first study time-travel and recursion.)

    2. This one's a little harder to solve. Yes, normally the query would need only 100 seconds. But the instant you power up the world's first hyperhypervisor, seventeen trillion script kiddies from the distant future are going to DOS you with CPU requests, and within 3 seconds it will melt a hole in your floor.

  • Tim E Kaard (unregistered) in reply to Bill Grogan
    Bill Grogan:
    Those who wish to learn about time-travel recursion must first study time-travel and recursion.
    Yes, but once you get the time travel part figured out, you can go back in time and teach yourself. In fact, why haven't you done that already?
  • Harrow (unregistered)

    I was unable to get this utility running with any of my hard drives, so I adapted it to use my Digital Equipment Corporation TC11/TU56 storage subsystem. I am quite pleased with the overall performance, which is several times faster than the Microsoft SQL-Server 2008 on the company network.

    -Harrow.

  • Pete Bytecode (unregistered)

    Are you a total TARD ? "I don’t need some database telling me what data I can and can’t store:" So I suppose you have no problem if the DB tells your idiot doctor your BP is 80 over 120 because one of your tard friends forgot to implement the integrity rules we all hold self evident for blood pressure ?

    Actually, I apologize, I called you a tard, you're not. "I could write an entire book on the database engine (and in fact, I am)". Your just a low-rent, hype-mongering, self-promoting SOB.

  • your name here (unregistered)

    TRWTF is there's no WTF for April 2nd.

  • Anonymously Yours (unregistered) in reply to Tim E Kaard
    Tim E Kaard:
    Bill Grogan:
    Those who wish to learn about time-travel recursion must first study time-travel and recursion.
    Yes, but once you get the time travel part figured out, you can go back in time and teach yourself. In fact, why haven't you done that already?
    Perhaps he got side-tracked becoming his own grandfather.
  • TimG (unregistered) in reply to Tim E Kaard
    Tim E Kaard:
    In fact, why haven't you done that already?
    Maybe he will have had already? Or is it "will do already?"... I'm terrible with tenses.
  • Affirmative What, now? (unregistered)

    You'd better be careful with your April Fool's jokes. You give anyone the idea to do anything in JavaScript and they'll find a way to do it, whether it should ever exist or not.

  • Skip Sailors (unregistered)

    I would explain Twitter to a 1999 garp as > tail -f daily.digest.news.*

  • (cs) in reply to Pete Bytecode
    Pete Bytecode:
    Are you a total TARD ? "I don’t need some database telling me what data I can and can’t store:" So I suppose you have no problem if the DB tells your idiot doctor your BP is 80 over 120 because one of your tard friends forgot to implement the integrity rules we all hold self evident for blood pressure ?

    Actually, I apologize, I called you a tard, you're not. "I could write an entire book on the database engine (and in fact, I am)". Your just a low-rent, hype-mongering, self-promoting SOB.

    New to the web then, are we Pete?

  • RandomUser423672 (unregistered) in reply to Tim E Kaard
    Tim E Kaard:
    Bill Grogan:
    Those who wish to learn about time-travel recursion must first study time-travel and recursion.
    Yes, but once you get the time travel part figured out, you can go back in time and teach yourself. In fact, why haven't you done that already?
    Because "go[ing] back in time and teach[ing] yourself" has a reasonable chance of being this: http://www.xkcd.com/716/.
  • 8-bit (unregistered) in reply to EatenByAGrue

    So my question is: what kind of destruction can be wrought by hackers?

  • Daniel Alexiuc (unregistered)

    Even though I knew this was April Fools, my heart was still in my mouth requisitioning that drive with Administrator privileges.

    Pretty elaborate April Fools joke!

  • Brillant (unregistered) in reply to 8-bit
    8-bit:
    So my question is: what kind of destruction can be wrought by hackers?
    But that's why adding JavaScript support was so Brillant. Your problem, though, is you are thinking very negatively, with that destruction talk. Think of it as Empowerment! People will finally have control over the data that rules their lives!!! Think of it as merging social networking into the database. Nothing could be wrong with that. It's Brillant!!!!
  • rktect (unregistered)

    April Fools?

    If not... wow - there are just so many flaws in your understanding of databases in general (both RDBMS and NoSQL) and your solution architecture - I wouldn't even know where to start helping you grasp basic knowledge necessary.

    I'm afraid you're in for some constructive criticism by some knowledgeable experts.

    I guess... congrats for trying?!!

  • dreadwolf (unregistered) in reply to Loof Lirpa

    You got be kidding! Ummm... right?

  • jkrebo (unregistered)

    Go to address 4C38: "April Fools! If you've made it this far, then that means you (a) have a whole lot of gaul for going all the way, (b) dissassembled the code and saw the facade (c) have a hard disk you're willing to sacrifice, (d) actually want to use APDB a whatever the reason, you deserve a WTF sticker!"

    Instructions follow.

  • Matteo Italia (unregistered) in reply to jkrebo
    jkrebo:
    Go to address 4C38: "April Fools! If you've made it this far, then that means you (a) have a whole lot of gaul for going all the way, (b) dissassembled the code and saw the facade (c) have a hard disk you're willing to sacrifice, (d) actually want to use APDB a whatever the reason, you deserve a WTF sticker!"

    Instructions follow.

    Finding the string in this way is no fun. Disassembling the whole thing is much better.

  • (cs) in reply to Gary B
    Gary B:
    My team built a fast system - one of the very first 911 map display systems, if not the first, for Fairfax County VA in 1985. The maps were 8-bit color images, not vector files (although other data was overlaid from vector files) One of the key design elements was that the map image tiles were stored in physically optimal sectors on the disk so that when the user was 'live' panning across the county, the next image tile could be found and read as fast as possible. The visible image was two tiles square (IIRC), and the display buffer held all the bordering tiles. Given a street location, the system could look up the address in the geolocation database, and would get back a list of the disk addresses of the necessary tiles to retrieve.

    This system was powered by a 286 with six expensive display cards. Each 286 system supported six graphic terminals, and there were four systems sharing two disk servers via an early SCSI interface with hacked drivers (to allow multiple controllers). This system supported 24 911 operators with an average initial display of 1.5 seconds from the moment the address came in - a lot better than the required 7 seconds.

    Would you believe I just read all the way through that thinking it had something to do with Porsche drivers?

  • jkrebo (unregistered) in reply to Matteo Italia

    But I did disassmeble it! And it was still fun.

  • Muppet (unregistered) in reply to Ike

    Surely you don't need to hardcode all of the data. Why not break up complicated things like words into their separate components like letters and maybe assign a number to that letter and convert it to a series of 1's and 0's. I hear computers deal very well with these.

    Then you can just write them like this directly to the disk or perhaps to memory if you're not worried about what might happen if the power goes off.

    Simply then get the computer to read the 1's & 0's in the right order and you can re-create the information that you wanted to retrieve.

    Using this simple process you only need to have a disk or memory that has sufficient storage to hold "just the basic data", so like A-Z (don't bother with lower case, it's over-rated) and 0-9 and perhaps some punctuation. But not {} and []. They just get confusing in javascript.

    So you'd only need about 50 or so storage locations. The saving on memory and disks would be immense.

    You could just write each letter onto a piece of paper and photograph it on said wooden table. The table would easily be big enough with the advantage that if the power did go off, it'd still be there.

  • OldNews (unregistered)

    "It’d be as futile as trying to explain Twitter to someone from 1999."

    Does the author really believe that Twitter is that unique or hard to comprehend?

    The only part you would have to explain to your 1999 self is why people would bother to use it. Smaller more targeted social networks existed in 1999. Just explain how celebrities can make anything marketable in our 2010. Is the product useful? Who cares if you have a Celebrity (thus marketing) on your side.

  • One way to download your BASIC programs... (unregistered)
    Depending on what you’re looking at, the room you’re in has dimensions, contains walls and maybe window coverings. The furniture in a room is constructed from blueprints/plans using wood and metal, which in turn are cut to size and are made up of even smaller things like molecules. And those of course break down to atoms, which have sub-atomic particles, and quarks.

    So the world's really just a big XML document? shudder

  • oh (unregistered) in reply to Muppet
    Muppet:
    Surely you don't need to hardcode all of the data. Why not break up complicated things like words into their separate components like letters and maybe assign a number to that letter and convert it to a series of 1's and 0's. I hear computers deal very well with these.

    Then you can just write them like this directly to the disk or perhaps to memory if you're not worried about what might happen if the power goes off.

    Simply then get the computer to read the 1's & 0's in the right order and you can re-create the information that you wanted to retrieve.

    do you think we could somehow encode programs in this way as well? if we could put those on the disk maybe we could get rid of all those cards with holes in.

  • Anonymouse (unregistered)

    I was reading this like "What the hell has this guy been smoking?" until I realised it was posted on April 1st. Funny.

  • PinkFloyd43 (unregistered) in reply to Ike

    Oh damm it took an entire clock cycle!

  • (cs)

    For quite a while I thought that the decrying of the decline of relational databases and the like was a lead-up to a SpectateSwamp joke. SSDS is clearly superior to your APDB. No known bugs!

  • CS (unregistered) in reply to you crazy

    I just opened up the file in a simple hex editor, scrolled down to the string tables, trawled through loads of crap until I got to the "April Fools" bit. Does this count as option (b) - disassembling the code? I didn't really disassemble it as such, just opened the file up ;)

  • not very decent (unregistered)

    Was this supposed to be an April Fool's joke? I thought this was too stupid to be one.

  • (cs)

    Where do I submit Bug Reports for APDB?

  • Herbie (unregistered) in reply to Ike

    What you are describing sounds remarkably like the Pick Database. Each record is accessed via a Hashing algorithm (key that is). The data may contain anything, within reason, and is completely dynamic, growing and shrinking as needed. Need 20 bytes for a name, no problem. Need 50, so.. Just put the name in and the record adjusts. Indexes are under your control. And again, No fixed length fields. No loss of disk space, even tho it's cheap. Only uses what is needed. File, and I do mean files, are allocated by what is called a Modulo. If you need to make the file larger, resizing may done on the fly or at restore time. Granted, there are issues, like adding an item sometime later would put the new item wayyyyy out on disk. That is if it didn't fit into the original file sizing parameters. Perhaps going to this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system might prove more informative.

  • me (unregistered)

    and they're portable too! http://dvice.com/archives/2009/05/35-inch-floppy.php

  • (cs) in reply to Twigg
    Twigg:
    "Although the APDB Engine is written in machine code, I used .NET 2.0 for menu stuff"

    That's pure win.

    Especially given the DOSy menu screenshots.

  • z f k (unregistered) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    From 1999? Hell, I still don't understand what all the hub-bub is about. I don't get it, really. Who cares that you just got home? Who cares that you're watching American Idol?
    Well, let me see... Advertisers? Customer profilers? Do you have something (even a non-material one, like... smokeware) to sell? You need to know what people do and where, when and how they do it? Just grep a bunch of tweets and analyze it. Or pay somebody a crapton dollars to do it for you.

    CYA

  • z f k (unregistered) in reply to One way to download your BASIC programs...
    One way to download your BASIC programs...:
    Depending on what you’re looking at, the room you’re in has dimensions, contains walls and maybe window coverings. The furniture in a room is constructed from blueprints/plans using wood and metal, which in turn are cut to size and are made up of even smaller things like molecules. And those of course break down to atoms, which have sub-atomic particles, and quarks.

    So the world's really just a big XML document? shudder

    Hee hee. MatriXML. ^_^;;;

    CYA

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Drive manufacturers have moved beyond the cylinder, sector, head architecture for a while now- in lieu of LBA. In fact, the fastest drives on the planet do not even have cylinders and heads anymore. A single number can act as index for either drives, files or any other block device. No need for 3 different numbers just to have an index.

    I call fad on this one.

  • Konamiman (unregistered)

    I don't get this one. What is the WTF here?

  • Nick (unregistered)

    Could this have been the plan of the poster of http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/03/02/2341236/Write-Bits-Directly-Onto-a-Hard-Drive-Platter ? I sure do hope so.

  • Nick (unregistered) in reply to Nick
  • (cs)
    APDB utilizes the physical memory locator (CHS# - Cylinder, Head, Sector) as data-access keys.

    In the late '70s, I actually worked at a place that removed its' file system and stored everything this way.

    When I (as system admin) restored the file system all hell broke loose!!!

    Not only that, but when it rained water would leak onto the huge disk packs. LOL

  • Gordon Haddely-Smythe (unregistered) in reply to ICH

    ... another down side is that you can never upgrade or re-organize your storage hardware, so make sure you get it right first time!

  • Costanza (unregistered) in reply to BentFranklin

    you sure it's not Not Too F'ing Smart?

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