Ever-Shrinking Data in USFA Membership Listings

[Wafath]

Or maybe I'm the one misunderstanding your intent.

I think "unnecessarily pedantic comment" tags makes my intent sufficiently transparent. : )

And now I've apparently sparked up a debate over the various merits of various RDBMSs.

Obviously there are a lot of bored people at work today.

W

[tchwojko]

And now I've apparently sparked up a debate over the various merits of various RDBMSs.

I didn't think there was any debate about Access.
I also have a very biased and self-serving opinion towards Oracle products.

[DHCJr]

You might try again as when I downloaded it the Division was there.

To clarify something, first of all the AS400 is considered a mini-computer, not a main-frame.

As for being old, a PC is older.

The AS400 has kept up with the times. It host many web sites, because the hardware is more robust than a PC network and is immune to PC viruses.

It is very secure. Almost every casino, many banks, hotels, airlines and cruise lines, shipping companies use it. Many of the larger ships also have AS400's on board.

They can be big like a main-frame, but they also can be the size of a PC. I worked on ones that were 9 terabytes to ones I picked up and moved when that needed to be done.

[peet]

To clarify something, first of all the AS400 is considered a mini-computer, not a main-frame.

As for being old, a PC is older.

The AS400 has kept up with the times. It host many web sites, because the hardware is more robust than a PC network and is immune to PC viruses.

It is very secure. Almost every casino, many banks, hotels, airlines and cruise lines, shipping companies use it. Many of the larger ships also have AS400's on board.

yeah, uh, ok.

So, um, would all the other geeks on the board please stop busting me for using fuzzy language to refer to this stuff? There's a virtue to communicating technical things in general terms when talking to the general public.

Please forgive me for putting on my "talking to the users" hat when posting on f.net.

And, uh, I certainly wasn't trying to denigrate AS400s. I'm sure they're great. Never worked with one myself. On the other hand, I've seen just a few little snippets of the USFA database, and it makes be frightened. I have nothing against the hardware it's stored in. Just the structure & content of the db itself. I don't even know what RDBMS it's in.

-p

[noodle]

I don't even know what RDBMS it's in.

i'm guessing DB2, but it could really be just about anything.

AS400 runs i5/os but you "can" install any os on it.

[KD5MDK]

I'm not sure the term mini-computer has any actual value, except to date you.

[DHCJr]

I was not trying to insult anyone. I happen to like the AS400.

The trouble with any system is how it is set up. I said it is very secure. I should have said, it can be very secure.

At my last job, I was not hired to be security officer and I was supposedly not given that access. The first week I showed my boss how not secure it was and my job title changed.

A mini-computer may not be used much any more and the lines have blured.

Most main frames and PC's have one thing in they are designed to do one thing at a time. A mini-computer is designed from the ground up at a multi-tasking computer. I haven't worked on many main frames, but the ones I have were not used with multiple people signed on and running jobs.

I have also worked PC networks and I am amazed how much they can do. For me I don't like to work that hard. Sometimes the AS400 is too easy and the people running it don't try and then that same system can be very bad.

Sorry I got us off track.

[tchwojko]

Sorry I got us off track.

We're running on Rails?

[KD5MDK]

I was talking to dberke when he mentioned Fencing Time being written in .Net and I asked if the web version would be Fencing Time on Rails.

The majority of mainframes I've dealt with have had hundreds of simultanious users.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Ever shrinking data? Just stay out of the cold water mate!

[DHCJr]

I was talking to dberke when he mentioned Fencing Time being written in .Net and I asked if the web version would be Fencing Time on Rails.

The majority of mainframes I've dealt with have had hundreds of simultanious users.

Yes and on most PC networks there are hundreds of simultanious users.

My explanation was probably not clear.

The PC and the main-frame were originally designed to do one thing at a time. They may have been modified, but the underlying process has not been thrown out.

Mini-computers were specifically designed for multiple users and multiple tasks.

Think of the famous main-frames. All that processing was built for one purpose, predict weather, test a bomb, etc.

I was trying to emphasize what it was designed to do originally, not what it does.

A baseball bat was not designed originally as a murder weapon, but it worked in 'Be Cool'. Something that was designed to be a killing instrument would have worked better at that one thing.

I hope this time I was clearer.

[Dr Epee]

Access may or may not be suitable for tracking the USFA's membership data, but if it isn't, it won't be because it isn't a "real database". I'll assume that in this discussion, by "Access" you really mean the Jet database engine, since Access itself can be used as a front-end for SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, and other client/server DBMS. Even with that stipulation, Jet is a real RDMS, though not client/server; it just has certain constraints and limitations that make it unsuitable for certain types of applications.

USFA membership data is paltry in volume, so that's no barrier. Jet can handle file sizes up to a maximum of 2GB, which would be way more than needed for the USFA's membership records. Jet is limited to a maximum of 255 simultaneous connections (and the practical limit is lower), so that could be an issue, depending on how the database is to be used. Certainly it would not be suitable to drive a high-volume website. And because it's a file-server DB, not client-server, it doesn't work at all well over a WAN, though there are ways to work around that if one is willing to take the trouble. And Jet is not suitable for an application that must be up and running 24/7, because you can't back it up reliably while updates are in progress.

Those constraints definitely do rule out Access/Jet for lots of applications. What people sometimes forget is that there are lots of applications for which they do *not* rule out Access. The way the USFA is currently handling and storing registrations, I doubt very much that Access couldn't handle all the current membership-related functions except online registration with ease. It seems likely that even the online registration process could be managed by batching registrations.

That said -- and Access defended -- then I would also say that, given the goal of adding online NAC registration and integrating it all with other database information, it does seem to me that a client/server database would be a better choice. The requirements of high concurrency and the desirability of continuous availability would be the main factors, trumping poratability and ease of use.

I'm sorry, I sem to have accidentally wandered onto the computer geek forum. I wish I knew what these guys are talking about. But, then again, maybe I don't.

[Goldgar]

I'm sorry, I sem to have accidentally wandered onto the computer geek forum. I wish I knew what these guys are talking about. But, then again, maybe I don't.

Sorry about that. I should have put "OT" in the subject. I wish there was a way to tag whole subthreads as off-topic, and have an option to ignore them.

[rsy]

Not sure if this is posted somewhere in all the thread drift, but the USFA .csv membership download now has all the missing info (ID #, division, section and membership type) back in .

-r