On 20 Feb 2013 06:59:00 -0800, in bit.listserv.ibm-main you wrote: >Shmuel is right, and this thread is symptomatic. > >Before dual-case devices became available the use of single-case ones >was clearly defensible because inescapable. > >The defense of the continued use of single-case ones once dual-case >replcements had become available, notionally on economic grounds, was >in fact an instance of the all but reflexive responses of >bureaucratized EDP managements to new technology.
Actually there is a more subtle and hard to deal with reason. Any alphanumeric field comparison or sort on alphanumeric fields assumed upper case only. If case insensitivity were to be required, all of them would have to be rewritten. If not, other problems could arise. This gets worse for non-English languages if possible. Name and address matching algorithms must be interesting even in monocase. Clark Morris > >They opposed providing every programmer with his or her own terminal: >terminals were not needed all the time; they could be shared, as >keypunches had been. They opposed the use of color terminals, >describing them as costly frills. They opposed the use of non-impact >printers, IBM or Xerox. They oppose the modernization of ancient, >creaky applications: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I could extend >this litany ad infinitum et nauseam; but my point is, I hope, made. > >The mainframe and its software are superb vehicles, but most of their >facilities go unused, at least directly, in most shops. (It is true >that they get some indirect use becauxe ISVs use them under the >covers.) > >The deeply conservative, reactionary in the literal sense, managers of >most mainframe shops oppose the use of new technology because they >perceive it to be disruptive; and of course it is, but those who >reject it are first left behind and then, all but certainly, >displaced. > >I am not at all sanguine about the long-term survival of the mainframe >outside a few niches. It should do, but most of the managers of >mainframe shops are preoccupied with preserving the comfortable, >familiar past. They are, predictably I suppose, curators and not >innovators. Worse, the young, who smell this, confound organizational >malaise with technical obsolescence. > > >John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
