Re: VLDB - for real?

I'm keeping this public (as is my right with any email which floats into my mailbox, because then its my property and if you don't like it you can talk to my lawyer) since the topic is of potential interest. I'm also playing light on the delete key. > > Is it just me? > > > Yep, Jack, it's just you. Only you. ;^) Could very well be - only one agreement so far (of course ye are the only nay-sayer to date). > > > I've noted of late a trend amongst the industry analysts claiming that > > very large databases are coming. > > [useful things clipped] > > > I see this as a problem. IMHO a pedabyte database means that someone hasn't > > done their analysis work very well, or it's something that's chock full of > > BLOBs. Either way, maybe the Fortune 100 will be worrying about databases > > of this size, but how about a little thought here... > > Have you considered that a pedabyte database might mean that the company just > has a whole stack of things it wants/has to keep around - and not on paper? > > The regulatory climate toward businesses is bad and getting worse all > the time. The length of time which corporations are required to keep > information on file ranges from seven to twenty years. Is it any wonder > that many of them are going to imaging in order to reduce the number and > amount of paper which would otherwise have to be kept on file? Surely there is no government requirement that historical information be accessible online? Could not this need be as easily met with an optical library with a good index? What exactly are you storing? Not that you are doing anything wrong - how should I know - but I can easily see corporations printing reports, form letters or what not and then scanning it in. Is the data being scanned/stored in the proper format? Are they spreadsheets that can be more efficiently stored in an exported form? If they are incoming correspondence, what happened to OCR? Next question, roughly where does (or would) your client rank in the Fortune index? > > Yes, it's the BLOBs. Yes, it's imaging. It's big. It's getting bigger. > > And it's marching right into your face. (And mine.) 8-(:-) Where is Steve McQueen when you need him? > > Bill Williams > > (FYI, I'm on an imaging project *right now*. Hundreds of gigs of storage. > Good design, wish I could take all the credit for it, but I can't. Only the > good parts.) > Best of luck with it. cheers j. _____________________________________________________________________________ Jack Parker - Hewlett Packard, BSMC Boise, Idaho, USA jparker@hpbs3645.boi.hp.com _____________________________________________________________________________ Back up my hard drive? You mean these things can actually run in reverse? _____________________________________________________________________________ Any opinions expressed herein are my own and not those of my employers. _____________________________________________________________________________