>>>>>My advice to Dimity is - find an excellent network person.
>>>>
>>>>Good to have one on your list - alternative is to make client pay for all work caused by his network issues.
>>>
>>>I do both. That's how (and a lot of TLC) I keep the networker happy.
>>>This is just one example of non-programming issues that would drive me batty if I didn't have that guy. Printing is probably the worst offender, followed by hiccups with remote connections.
>>>It's great to be able to forget about those things and concentrate on application programming because that networker is just about infallible.
>>>
>>>Technology also helps.
>>>Every time I do a SQL backup and I notice that Microsoft has not changed the default medium from "Tape" I remember the hours frittered away on tape devices.
>>>I haven't seen one in so long I forget what they look like, but they were another source of grief.
>>
>>[shrug] perhaps the reference to "tape" is something like "tar" on *nix systems? (i.e. an file bundling format rather than physical media) ... or the virtual cardpunch/reader found on IBMs VM systems was used to transport data between different computers?
>
>I always head the idea tar is /was the directory structure used on tapes. You need to read the whole data to get the last file. No random access. The 'nix folks just stuck to it - tar is a mighty tool, but the file format. OMIPU.

A tar file would be analogous to creating an ISO file prior to burning data onto CD-ROM or DVD-ROM (storage to tape and optical disc could be timing-sensitive -- writing to a single file would help the data to stream more consistently, especially if the buffering capability is limited). If you're not actually writing this data to the storage medium (e.g. tape or optical disc), it's just a file-bundling format.