[TUHS] SQL OS (Re: Abstractions

[Bakul Shah]

On Feb 16, 2021, at 12:15 AM, Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS <tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> Jon Steinhart <jon at fourwinds.com> writes:
> 
>> So if y'all are up for it, I'd like to have a discussion on what
>> abstractions would be appropriate in order to meet modern needs.  Any
>> takers?
> 
> A late friend of mine felt strongly that Unix needed an SQL interface to
> the kernel.  With all information and configuration in a well designed
> schema, system administration could be greatly enhanced, he felt, and
> could have standard interaction patterns across components -- instead of
> all the quirky command line interfaces we have today, and their user
> oriented output formats that you need to parse to use the data.

Not quite the same but Arthur Whitney, the author of the K array
programming language did something called kOS, mainly to run K apps.
It initially ran on Linux but then on "bare metal". The entire OS +
a graphic layer called z (to replace X11) fit in 62kB. But it seems
he never released it. No idea why. kdb (built on top of K) is a
columnar database. An old article on kOS.

http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501320

Also note that in mid 80s there was at least one company building
Unix with atomic transactions IO. I forget their name now -- it was
Tolerant Systems or Relational Systems or something. As a contractor
I wrote some testing framework for them for regression testing etc.
As I recall the OS was quite slow. There were a bunch of Unx 
workstations startups in the Silicon Valley in '80s. Not sure their
stories have been told (and I knew only a few bits and pieces that
I picked up as a contractor and forgot soon).