[TriLUG] UNIVAC 1, DBA

Steve Litt slitt at troubleshooters.com
Mon Nov 25 21:45:08 EST 2013


On Mon, 25 Nov 2013 20:24:14 -0500
Jeremy Davis <jeremyhwllc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey folks, my Great Aunt, Jean Lewis, was a database administrator
> with the Census Bureau. She worked with the UNIVAC 1, which was one
> of the first commercially used computers. She also had some
> affiliation with Grace Harper.
> 
> Jean is also the grandmother of my nephew, Joshua, who is very
> enthusiastic about technology and has attended most TriLUG meetings
> over the last year with my daughter Kacy and I.
> 
> I have been thinking it would be cool to have Joshua interview Jean
> about her experience with the UNIVAC 1 and I will record it then post
> it to Youtube to share.
> 
> I thought it would be neat to ask, if anyone on this list has ideas
> for good questions to ask during the interview?

With only 12KB of RAM, how was the database constructed? Was it
composed of fixed length sequential files sorted on primary key,
accessed by binary search? Did they have index files, sorted on a field
and containing the record number in a fixed length sequential file? How
did they insert records? Was it in a batch process once a day? I doubt
a join could be done with 12KB machine, so did they simulate joins
within the application program?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance


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