[log in to unmask] (Gilbert Prine) wrote: >Let me get off that soap box and mention Ada's under-used direct_io. >Combined with parts of the Ada tasking model, and with careful system design >it can be an effective custom database engine for any table with less than 4 >billion rows. What is the source of the magic number 4 Billion ? Certainly if I had 4 billion rows I would be on a modern processor, and that generally means 64-bit. (The fact that a processor was sold last week does not make it modern.) Larry Kilgallen