[PLUG] Deep, involved technical question

[Beldon <beldon@speakeasy.org>]

I got into a conversation with a cow orker today and found myself being asked 
a question I was in no way qualified to answer.

He was talking about a problem we have with an application.  This application 
has a server and a client component, and the server lives on the same box as 
the DBMS.  Not a problem except that it's an NT 4 box.

Now, understand, the team I am currently on is extremely defensive about 
Windows.  They have been on the defensive for a while now amidst rumors that 
this app would go on AIX (a major loss to the team), and they're always 
saying vey ill-informed things like "NT is as stable as Unix, an we can prove 
it!"  (In fact, our NT boxen are very stable-- because they're rebooted 
weekly).  It's only gotten worse since I announced I'd be leaving for the 
DB2/AIX team.

So we're talking about how NT can't really handle the resources for two major 
pieces of software (SQL Server and the Server for the application), and this 
guy says to me, "Well, any OS has trouble running more than one server app, 
isn't that right?"

I said, "No, not really."

He said, "How come?"

I said, "Because Unix handles tasks differently.  There isn't the same amout 
of resource contention on equal equipment because it's all about process 
control, rather than threads.  Each process has its own space that appears 
exclusive to that process.  That's why when an app crashes, it doesn't bring 
the system down."

He said, "Well I was under the impression that NT does the same thing."

And that, my friends, is where my knowledge ends.  I knew he was wrong, but 
couldn't say why (to the depth I needed to).

So, was I right as far as I went (not very) and can someone either give me a 
quick and dirty explanation or point me to a good source?

Thanx for reading and for the help.


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