Look Again

It always pays to look at things from different angles, and data-intensive applications are a good place to apply this principle. But arranging all that data in lots of custom ways can get pretty inefficient pretty fast. The answer is a View object: an extensible and scalable approach that allows multiple views of your data without multiple copies of that data. Gabhan Berry demonstrates the principle in his article "C++ View Objects."

And speaking of looking at things from different angles, it seems I should have looked at the subject of my last blog post from a few more angles before opening my mouth. My statement that:

"Certainly the idea of running code on multiple pieces of hardware, (whether in separate rooms, on separate chips, or on the same sliver of silicon) was science fiction for the average user just a few short years ago."

drew this response from astute reader Ed Weir:

"Unless, of course, you had a Commodore-Amiga box with an Intel bridgeboard. Specialized chips running specific processes under control of the CPU started a bit further back with the Commodore 64. Interprocess communication was fairly easily accomplished via AREXX and the AREXX ports that many commercial tools had implemented."

So unless you'll accept the implausible excuse that by "a few short years ago" I really meant "1986," I suppose I have a little crow to eat. Truth is, multiprocessor machines really can't be called "new." Ed was also kind enough to rustle up the following links for more information, which I relay here:

• The Amiga 1000 came out in 1985
• The "Sidecar" came out in 1986
• The Amiga 2000 came out in 1987, with the Bridgeboard (updated Sidecar) available.
• AREXX is a "glue" language, based on the multiplatform REXX. What the article neglects to tell you is that the glued applications were running simultaneously on the machine (multitasking).

One last fascinating Amiga note from Ed:

"Until recently my cable company (Comcast) was running at least some of its' channels on Amigas. How do I know? When a station went down, the Amiga error message displayed."

Posted by Kevin Carlson at 01:58 PM  Permalink