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Message Posted: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 @ 18:26:47 GMT

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I'd like to comment on Sam's statements below, which he added to this original discussion thread. He emphasizes the fact NCR UNIX still lacks support for flat files larger than 2 GB. NCR has discontinued its SVR4 implementation about 2 years ago, and has been telling its customers that has decided to quit its former role as a general purpose UNIX servers vendor. Since then NCR UNIX has become just a robust OS able to support Teradata's PDE on each TPA (Trusted Parallel Application) node of an NCR MPP platform, it cannot be considered a viable Teradata UNIX Client platform anymore. When Sam refers to "one or more NCR UNIX nodes available" he may be talking about no-TPA nodes in an NCR WorldMark server or perhaps standalone NCR servers still running NCR UNIX. In the first case, NCR has accepted to implement the choice of a different OS for no-TPA nodes in a WorldMark server, Windows 2000 will be available as an option starting with V2R5, so a single MPP complex will have for instance TPA nodes running under NCR UNIX and one or perhaps more no-TPA nodes running under Windows 2000. In the second case the choice would be to reinstall the NCR server as a Teradata Client platform using Windows NT/2000 or Solaris for Intel, migrating any utilities like FastExport from NCR UNIX to the Windows or Intel Solaris versions, without the 2 GB file size limitation (remember all Teradata client utilities provide exactly same functionality on any platform). Many times I see Teradata implementations on the field where client processes run in TPA nodes, and the internal NCR UNIX file systems defined to support PDE and Teradata are also used to stage/land flat files to be used as input for the client utilities, even adding an additional internal disk in the TPA node. This of course is an extremely poor architecture implementation that should be discouraged, for many obvious reasons.

A Teradata server implementation on Intel IA-64 bits processors will not change at all the current perspective. The choice of the OS for TPA nodes will never impact decisions related to client processes, which as usual will belong to client platforms, having the Teradata user complete freedom to choose the most convenient one that fits the implementation requirements. By the way, NCR has announced that for Intel IA-64 there will be an Open UNIX strategy, i.e. Teradata will be ported to most popular UNIX platforms, starting with HP-UX and RedHat Linux.

About "The Teradata is not the end of the line for the data, and we need to play...": I believe Teradata as a server has the richest connectivity options available today for any RDBMS, unsurpassed mainframe/ESCON channels capabilities, gigabit ethernet performance for intranets, JDBC for web based applications, outstanding load/unload client utilities running on any platform.

This is just my personal opinion.

Best regards,

Jorge.
NCR

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