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From: Bakul Shah <bakul@iitbombay.org>
To: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] SQL OS (Re:  Abstractions
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 20:06:01 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <A8020D09-2554-4B9B-8AB5-09F65C2A189A@iitbombay.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <m2wnv8v36e.fsf@thuvia.hamartun.priv.no>

On Feb 16, 2021, at 12:15 AM, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> writes:
> 
>> So if y'all are up for it, I'd like to have a discussion on what
>> abstractions would be appropriate in order to meet modern needs.  Any
>> takers?
> 
> A late friend of mine felt strongly that Unix needed an SQL interface to
> the kernel.  With all information and configuration in a well designed
> schema, system administration could be greatly enhanced, he felt, and
> could have standard interaction patterns across components -- instead of
> all the quirky command line interfaces we have today, and their user
> oriented output formats that you need to parse to use the data.

Not quite the same but Arthur Whitney, the author of the K array
programming language did something called kOS, mainly to run K apps.
It initially ran on Linux but then on "bare metal". The entire OS +
a graphic layer called z (to replace X11) fit in 62kB. But it seems
he never released it. No idea why. kdb (built on top of K) is a
columnar database. An old article on kOS.

http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320

Also note that in mid 80s there was at least one company building
Unix with atomic transactions IO. I forget their name now -- it was
Tolerant Systems or Relational Systems or something. As a contractor
I wrote some testing framework for them for regression testing etc.
As I recall the OS was quite slow. There were a bunch of Unx 
workstations startups in the Silicon Valley in '80s. Not sure their
stories have been told (and I knew only a few bits and pieces that
I picked up as a contractor and forgot soon).

  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-02-17  4:07 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-02-15 19:56 [TUHS] Abstractions Jon Steinhart
2021-02-15 21:52 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-16  7:13   ` arnold
2021-02-16  8:15 ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS
2021-02-16 10:04   ` Wesley Parish
2021-02-16 19:59   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-02-17  4:01     ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-02-17  6:50     ` Chris Hanson
2021-02-17  4:06   ` Bakul Shah [this message]
2021-02-16 12:26 ` Rich Morin
2021-02-16 22:46 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-02-17 12:09 ` David Arnold

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