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OpneVMS is agressively pursuing the database server market, and the
major database vendors. V7.1 provides a 64-bit VLM environment, and
we are actively making changes to the operating system to optimize
for large database environment.
I suggest contacting Nick Carr (product management) or Steve Zalewski
(Base OpenVMS Technical Director and Strategic Planner).
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| I worked for DEC and lived in Massachusetts during the Mike Dukakis era
when the state was known as "Taxachusetts." A right-wing politician in
Washington, when asked if he'd ever visited a communist country, opined that,
well, yes, he'd visited the Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts. Digital was, I
believe, the second largest (private?) employer in the state.
So, when Digital started falling on hard times in the late 80's, I figured we
were too important to the state to let die, and I asked myself, "why not have a
small new tax on the citizenry to make sure we make a profit?"
Now I hear in recent days that workers at the Internal Revenue Service, which
must do a few hundred $billion a year, must use up to nine separate computer
systems and a lot of sneaker-net to even try to service "customers" and
process returns. They have recently abandoned a several-billion dollar effort
to develop a new system. There is talk of privatizing at least some of the IRS.
Here's where I imagine DIGITAL can step in with our world-beating 64-bit data-
warehousing and transaction-processing technology. This seems to be an
application made to order for us, and if we can get a small cut of the
proceeds, we're in fat city! It WOULD be kinda like having our own taxing
authority, and we may even be able to avoid getting our hands dirty in this
awful competitive commercial environment we've been hearing so much about but
which we apparently just don't understand. Yuck, who needs that?
Now we still have a lot of smart software engineers and some tax lawyers and
accountants, and with DIGITAL UNIX (that's how it's written these days, BTW),
or with OpenVMS, which says in this notes string that it's in this market, we
should be able to handle this. And if for some reason we can't make the system
work, well, that'll take about five years and we need revenue now. There may
even be an opportunity to get a new name for the Company, something not akin to
"Computer Company", which our current albatross of a name is similar to in some
respects.
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