Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: News software: binary files and distributed DB's
Message-ID: <1990Jul17.153848.25082@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Jul16.043412.15157@mindy.uucp>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 90 15:38:48 GMT

In article <1990Jul16.043412.15157@mindy.uucp> eastick@mindy.uucp (Doug Eastick) writes:
>1) Has anyone used news software to distribute binay files? Say,
>   compressed tar files? ...

The odds are that a lot of current software will mishandle it.  I think
C News will deal with it properly, though, if the underlying communications
links can.  (Don't try it over Bitnet! :-))

>2) Has anyone hacked news software to provide a REALLY distributed
>   database? ...

Actually, the uucp maps more or less constitute one now.

>   Message-ID's could be used a product-numbers and owner
>   identification (e.g. <sun-ss1+@west.rnd.sun.com> which is fictitous),

Nope nope.  Message-IDs must be unique per message; a message with a
message-ID that duplicates an earlier one will not even appear on your
system unless the earlier one is sufficiently dead and gone.  This is
vital for loop prevention in the presence of redundant connections (and
if you are using news for something important, you want redundant
connections).  But there is no fundamental problem in using the news
system as a transport medium for database updates, other than the lack
of end-to-end reliability guarantees.  Just put your product/owner info
in an "X-Somethingorother:" header or in the body of the message.
-- 
NFS:  all the nice semantics of MSDOS, | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
and its performance and security too.  |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry
