What if mass storage were free? (1980)
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What if mass storage were free? (1980)
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Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#2I just found this quite old paper and it came as a surprise to me to discover
that the idea of append-only storage is not 20 years old but more than 40!
The older work I was aware of is on "The design and implementation of a log-structured file system" (1)
So this is with pleasure that I learned that these ideas was around in the 80:
- Deletion considered harmful
- A non-deletion strategy using timestamps
- The importance of accessing past data
- A non-deletion strategy can improve both integrity and reliability
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#3I just found this quite old paper and it came as a surprise to me to discover that the idea of append-only storage is not 20 years old but more than 40! The older work I was aware of is on "The design and implementation of a log-structured file system" (1) So this is with pleasure that I learned that these ideas was around in the 80: - Deletion considered harmful - A non-deletion strategy using timestamps - The impor…
Paper-based accounting was append-only, so I think the idea's always been there but was uneconomic in machine readable media for a long time.
(in particular, "new master = old master + updates" card/tape jobs were in principle append-only but —due to finite number of tapes— in practice overwriting)
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#4I just found this quite old paper and it came as a surprise to me to discover that the idea of append-only storage is not 20 years old but more than 40! The older work I was aware of is on "The design and implementation of a log-structured file system" (1) So this is with pleasure that I learned that these ideas was around in the 80: - Deletion considered harmful - A non-deletion strategy using timestamps - The impor…
Paper-based accounting was append-only, so I think the idea's always been there but was uneconomic in machine readable media for a long time. (in particular, "new master = old master + updates" card/tape jobs were in principle append-only but —due to finite number of tapes— in practice overwriting)
Not at all! Medieval documents were routinely washed and reused.
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#5I just found this quite old paper and it came as a surprise to me to discover that the idea of append-only storage is not 20 years old but more than 40! The older work I was aware of is on "The design and implementation of a log-structured file system" (1) So this is with pleasure that I learned that these ideas was around in the 80: - Deletion considered harmful - A non-deletion strategy using timestamps - The impor…
A non-deletion strategy should consider including an encryption and key management strategy to enable retroactive secure deletion without impacting availability, reliability, and performance. This seems to be missing from a lot of systems that deal with personal information.
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paper-based accounting was append-only, so I think the idea's always been there but was uneconomic in machine readable media for a long time. (in particular, "new master = old master + updates" card/tape jobs were in principle append-only but —due to finite number of tapes— in practice overwriting)
Not at all! Medieval documents were routinely washed and reused.
A reused manuscript page is called a palimpsest and often the scraped off text can be recovered. Some of Archimedes writings actually survived this way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paper-based accounting was append-only, so I think the idea's always been there but was uneconomic in machine readable media for a long time. (in particular, "new master = old master + updates" card/tape jobs were in principle append-only but —due to finite number of tapes— in practice overwriting)
Not at all! Medieval documents were routinely washed and reused.
And wax tablets, slates, etc. Pedantically, I suppose neither these nor parchment is really paper.
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#8I just found this quite old paper and it came as a surprise to me to discover that the idea of append-only storage is not 20 years old but more than 40! The older work I was aware of is on "The design and implementation of a log-structured file system" (1) So this is with pleasure that I learned that these ideas was around in the 80: - Deletion considered harmful - A non-deletion strategy using timestamps - The impor…
Sadly 1992 is 31 years ago. The authors pushed for log structured filesystems in an earlier paper in 1988 : Beating the I/O Bottleneck https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1988/5760.html . It was inspiration for many storage appliances, NetApp probably being a very strong example.
Though many were thinking about these ideas in the 88-92 timeframe, as Tape storage systems are roughly speaking append only, so lots of the ideas of a logged filesystem are around the increased random read from disk drives.
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#9> Optical discs promise to come one to two orders of magnitude closer to the limiting case of free mass storage than ever before. Other features of optical discs include improved reliability and a single technology for both on-line and archival storage with a long shelf life. Because of these features and because of (not in spite of) their non-deletion limitation, it is argued that optical discs fit the requirements of database systems better than magnetic discs and tapes.
Wild view from where we sit today, but CDs were ~700MB in 1982. Seagate launched a 5MB hard drive in 1980 so.... not entirely absurd to think that `just don't delete things` could be the way of the future. We sorta adopted `just don't delete things` anyway though not with respect to RDBMS systems.
Thanks for sharing!
Re: What if mass storage were free? (1980)
#10> Optical discs promise to come one to two orders of magnitude closer to the limiting case of free mass storage than ever before. Other features of optical discs include improved reliability and a single technology for both on-line and archival storage with a long shelf life. Because of these features and because of (not in spite of) their non-deletion limitation, it is argued that optical discs fit the requirements…
I recall the 10MB ad more.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0d/b3/b6/0db3b67dcdd2edbedd5c...
Classic!