Path: ...!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!3.eu.feeder.erje.net!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lynn Wheeler Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Article on new mainframe use Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 08:28:01 -1000 Organization: Wheeler&Wheeler Lines: 36 Message-ID: <87o75s726m.fsf@localhost> References: <3f8sbj9chugcr6arbpck2t7nb0g87ff6ik@4ax.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2024 20:28:08 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="50c8c2ba89f24b838aa8eab44c47427e"; logging-data="1610577"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/Bg0LYpJ9P4oXGYwUMzbbTUShat8sUk1c=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cancel-Lock: sha1:jSa4fTfpR97B1lFkauyB7IDm/H8= sha1:EneYPpz1nKXYCbhpgwKsXk32L4c= Bytes: 3247 Lawrence D'Oliveiro writes: > One major crack in this wall came with the introduction of relational > DBMSes, particularly ones using SQL as their interface language: suddenly, > the use of such databases became very much a core “business” need. > > The best way to interface to such a DBMS was to be able to generate SQL > strings on the fly; but this required some facility with manipulation of > dynamic, variable-length strings, which COBOL completely lacked. And so > special extensions were tacked on, just to cope with the generation of SQL > queries and templates. I was brought in as consultant to small client/server startup, two former Oracle people (that we had worked on doing cluster scale-up for HA/CMP) were there responsible for "commerce server" and wanted to do payment transactions on the server, the startup had also invented SSL they wanted to use, the result is now frequently called ecommerce. First webservers were flat files ... but later there were increasing RDBMS-based webservers that were experiencing increase number of exploits. One problem was that as part of periodic maintenance, the internet interfaces were shutdown, multiple layers of firewalls and security facilities shutdown; maintenance performed and process reversed to bring webserver back up. WEBSERVER RDBMS mainteance tended to be much more complex and time consuming (than flat file based webservers) .... and they were frequently in big rush to get back online, failed to reactivate all the firewall and security facilities. trivia: I worked with Jim Gray and Vera Watson on the original SQL/relational implementation, "System/R". Also we were able to do technical transfer to Endicott (under the "radar" while corporation was preoccupied with "EAGLE", next great DBMS) for SQL/DS. Then when "EAGLE" imploded, there was a request for how fast could "System/R" be ported to MVS (eventually released as DB2). -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970