Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Ideas for Message-ID's
Message-ID: <1991Mar28.220518.24447@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1991 22:05:18 GMT
References: <3427@litchi.bbn.com> <1991Mar22.050749.22115@looking.on.ca> <b2x77c.9uo@wang.com> <50a41197.1bc5b@pisa.citi.umich.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <50a41197.1bc5b@pisa.citi.umich.edu> rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes:
>Wait, I've got an idea.  How about numbering each article, starting with '1'
>and going up.  You could keep a counter, say in a file in /usr/lib/news, and
>increment it each time...

How do you coordinate simultaneous access to that file by multiple posters?
Across a network filesystem?  Across NFS (the thing that shambles like a
filesystem)?  What happens if it gets scrambled?  Shared databases are a
lot trickier than they look.  C News abandoned that approach deliberately.
-- 
"The stories one hears about putting up | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 are all true."  -D. Harrison|  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry
