Re: (not entirely...) OT: OPINION... chicken entrails, runic stones, and crystal balls... WAS CoBOL moved to OO

From: Doug Scott (dwscott_at_ieee.org)
Date: 01/02/04 

Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:22:11 GMT

Peter,

> I have reason to believe that Batch Processing will be rendered redundant
> within 20 years. (See my post in this thread).

And see my counter-post :-)

> The die is now cast and distributed systems will win.

There will always be a need for centralised processing - prepare reports
once and send them via the network; in particular, weekly/monthly
statements will always be batch, and complex documents like insurance
contracts will be the last to go electronic, I'd say. Having said that, I'm
staggered that the Land Registry has gone web-based. We'll have to see how
successful that is.

Come to think of it, the Land Registry isn't distributed. In fat, many of
the web-based solutions aren't distributed. Again, the presentation layer
may be distributed, but distributing the database processing is much more
difficult. 

---
Doug
dwscott@ieee.org