The benefits of database computers

Parallel processing has long been recognized as a highly efficient method of applying large amounts of computing power to specialised applications. The world of commercial computing however, has for the most part, failed to supply suitable work to justify the creation of commercial parallel systems. The advent of the relational model, with its parallel language-SQL-and the need to hold large amounts of data, has given this opportunity. The author introduces some of the benefit to be gained from large scale parallel hardware using the Teradata DBC/1012 database computer, currently in use at many large commercial organisations, as a prime example