By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data-driven white label SEO
    Does Data Mining Really Help with White Label SEO?
    7 Min Read
    marketing analytics for hardware vendors
    IT Hardware Startups Turn to Data Analytics for Market Research
    9 Min Read
    big data and digital signage
    The Power of Big Data and Analytics in Digital Signage
    5 Min Read
    data analytics investing
    Data Analytics Boosts ROI of Investment Trusts
    9 Min Read
    football data collection and analytics
    Unleashing Victory: How Data Collection Is Revolutionizing Football Performance Analysis!
    4 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: “Storage Dreams” and the greatest things since sliced bread!
Share
Notification Show More
Aa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Aa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Big Data > Data Warehousing > “Storage Dreams” and the greatest things since sliced bread!
Data Warehousing

“Storage Dreams” and the greatest things since sliced bread!

TeradataAusNZ
Last updated: 2009/11/12 at 3:07 PM
TeradataAusNZ
7 Min Read
SHARE

Last week I attended the 16th Annual Computer Old-Timers Lunch, and it always provides an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the Australian IT industry and the industry more broadly. To qualify as an “old-timer” you must have worked with paper tape, punch cards or floppy disks. But even with that qualification I am at least a “second generation” ITer and it is always a privilege to be in the presence of some of our pioneers, “the first generation”.

Australia’s first computer (CSIRAC) and the world’s fourth, was built at the University of Sydney in 1949 and turned off in 1964 (before I even started) and Australia was the world’s third nation to enter the digital age. http://www.csiro.au/science/ps4f.html

CSIRAC has also been referred to as “the machine that changed the world”. It “was a supercomputer for its time – revolutionising everything from weather forecasting to banking, and playing the first ever computer music.” http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/csirac/default.htm

Back then, research aspirations focused on finding a way to store the instructions in computer memory along with the data so that the computer could respond to more complex instructions. …

More Read

5 Big Data Storage Solutions

First Look: Teradata Integrated Marketing Management
Measuring Solid State Storage Performance: A Journey Through Time
We’re Only Saying ‘Au Revoir’ to a Great Sponsor
Addressing Slowly Changing Dimensions with Teradata v13



Last week I attended the 16th Annual Computer Old-Timers Lunch, and it always provides an opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the Australian IT industry and the industry more broadly. To qualify as an “old-timer” you must have worked with paper tape, punch cards or floppy disks. But even with that qualification I am at least a “second generation” ITer and it is always a privilege to be in the presence of some of our pioneers, “the first generation”.

Australia’s first computer (CSIRAC) and the world’s fourth, was built at the University of Sydney in 1949 and turned off in 1964 (before I even started) and Australia was the world’s third nation to enter the digital age. http://www.csiro.au/science/ps4f.html

CSIRAC has also been referred to as “the machine that changed the world”. It “was a supercomputer for its time – revolutionising everything from weather forecasting to banking, and playing the first ever computer music.” http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/csirac/default.htm

Back then, research aspirations focused on finding a way to store the instructions in computer memory along with the data so that the computer could respond to more complex instructions. Until that was achieved operators sat at a separate console and programs were fed into the computer on punched paper tapes. This was their “Storage Dream”.Storage_Dream_Blog

“If a computer is finding its own way, you can put in branched or conditional instructions – ‘If this is negative, do this’,” says Thorne. “The computer can actually weave its way through calculations autonomously. Once it’s set up, it can run without intervention. This was the great dream.”

By the time I got into the industry, there were still only postgraduate studies in computing, none for the undergraduate, but instructions could be stored in memory. To test my programs (on a CDC 3200) I would submit two batch jobs of cards a day with my modified program – and if it crashed I got a memory dump to work out what went wrong. This was certainly a big incentive to get your code right!

My “Storage Dream” came from the second machine I worked on, a PDP-8. To get the machine started I had to “key in” the boot instructions and I loaded my programs into the computer via “shoe boxes” of paper tape – but at least they got stored on small magnetic tapes and I didn’t have to do it every time I needed to run the program. Here’s a Web link to a video of the booting of a DEC PDP-8 console. [Thanks to David Gesswein of pdp8online.com, who produced the video in 2008.] So for me, when the PDP-11 came out with a push button start I thought this was the “greatest thing since sliced bread”!

Our industry has continued to progress at a rapid rate and today the old problem or “Storage Dream” of bringing data and instructions together as fast as possible continues to drive invention and product enhancements. It came at a cost though – that of data management and storage management overheads. A full time job for many! At least all I had to do was read and write to flat files on tape in a sequential manner. The only overhead was a dual tape read/write for backup/recovery.

Today the “Storage Dream” solution continues to evolve as it solves both the physical means through solid state devices (for now at least) and database management systems to automate the management of data for optimal access and utilisation. For example, in the data warehousing context, Teradata has announced the world’s first solid state data warehouse appliance for hyper-analytics.

While these products are just another step along the “Storage Dream” journey we have all been frustrated by some aspect of our work with computers and each of us will have our “Dream” app. or invention that we claim to be “the greatest thing since sliced bread” – and believe me that was a great invention – so what is your dream app. or invention?

Christine Page-Hanify

 

*Image Source: www.abc.net.au

TAGGED: solid state data warehouse, teradata
TeradataAusNZ November 12, 2009
Share This Article
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

sobm for ai-driven cybersecurity
Software Bill of Materials is Crucial for AI-Driven Cybersecurity
Security
IT budgeting for data-driven companies
IT Budgeting Practices for Data-Driven Companies
IT
machine,translation
Translating Artificial Intelligence: Learning to Speak Global Languages
Artificial Intelligence
data science upskilling
Upskilling for Emerging Industries Affected by Data Science
Big Data

Stay Connected

1.2k Followers Like
33.7k Followers Follow
222 Followers Pin

You Might also Like

Data Management

5 Big Data Storage Solutions

6 Min Read
teradata IMM solutions
Business IntelligenceData ManagementDecision ManagementInside CompaniesMarketing

First Look: Teradata Integrated Marketing Management

9 Min Read

Measuring Solid State Storage Performance: A Journey Through Time

5 Min Read

We’re Only Saying ‘Au Revoir’ to a Great Sponsor

2 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

AI chatbots
AI Chatbots Can Help Retailers Convert Live Broadcast Viewers into Sales!
Chatbots
ai in ecommerce
Artificial Intelligence for eCommerce: A Closer Look
Artificial Intelligence

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?