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Lets start with, "Who is Randall Nelson, the creator of MPbase?"
I am a computer speed freak. I am someone who has made a career
out of making systems run faster. Someone who at one time or another
has been a DBA (database administrator) for most commercial DBMSs:
M204, IMS, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, IDMS… Someone who has both
worked on and administrated a wide number of different systems.
Everything from IBM mainframes to standalone imbedded systems
code on a 4.77MHz XT. Operating systems including: MVS, DOS/VSE,
VM/CMS, UNIX, CPM, DOS, Windows…
Many years ago I had an eye-opening experience that started me
down a different road. At the time I was the DBA for an IMS database.
We had just converted an AR ledger from punch cards to an IMS
database. It took several hours to run the AR ledger total. I
took this total to the head filing clerk to verify.
I assumed it would take days to duplicate what the computer had
done in hours. So, I started to walk away. As I turned she said
"Wait a minute and I will check this for you." I almost
fell off my feet. I watched as she used some files, a set of 3x5
cards and an adding machine to produce the same number in minutes
not hours, much less days!?!?!?
Up until this point, I had been convinced that the computer was
the fastest way to handle information. There was no way to do
this kind of work using files and paper. I realized just how little
I knew about working smart, not hard. It took over 20 years to
fully develop the computerized form of that "minutes not
hours" information handling system. This resulted in MPbase
a "seconds not hours" information handling system.
What you are about to read (or just read), sounds like overstuffed
marketing hype. This is the result of a paradigm shift "catch
22." If you explain a new paradigm using the old rules and
assumptions you will prove yourself wrong. If you explain using
the new rules and assumptions you sound like a babbling idiot.
Having said that, let's try an example.
Let's try to explain a gang (linked set) of six diesel locomotives
to someone who thinks only in terms of steam engines. Under the
old rules this is simply six engines used together to pull a single
train. For someone working in the old paradigm there are several
issues why this will not work. Issue #1, you could never balance
the steam pressure. Issue #2, there is no possible way to keep
several sets of controls in sink. Therefore this can not work.
Two engines maybe, but six no way.
Under the new rules the old issues do not make sense. With the
new rules, several engines provide power to lots of little motors.
This means that whether the engines and motors are in one physical
locomotive or several is not relevant. From the steam point of
view this is utter nonsense.
The more knowledge one has the harder it is to cross the bridge to a new paradigm. I was no exception to this rule. During the years this paradigm was being developed and polished there were several times I had to stop and re-convince myself of its validity. There were times during testing when I would look at what I had running and decide that what I was seeing just could not be. Each time I had to devise some way to prove to myself that I was not nuts. Here is one example:
At one point during an early test, I just stopped believing what
the system could do. The only solution was to spend over 4 hours
single-stepping the code to convince myself that it was really
looking at every single row it claimed to. This was logically
a waste of time, as counts and extracts precisely matched the
results derived from the flat files used to load the system. Adds,
deletes, and changes were correctly reflected in the output.
In short, I knew what it was doing. I would not
believe what it was doing. I had all the needed
proof, but I still could not except the results. This was my personal
version of "I will see it, when I believe it."
I would ask you to suspend your disbelief long enough to allow yourself to get past the proof and on to the belief. I do have a running demo that I will show to anyone. If you are shown the demo, I would like you to be able to see it.
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