On Jul 10, 2004, at 12:36 PM, Jochen Riekhof wrote:

> Hi Avi...
>
>> Having a process die suddenly does not require hardware failure.  
>> Operating systems kill processes all the time.  Not to mention 
>> sysadmins.  If I can't "killall -9 squeak" without fearing for my 
>> data, that's a big problem.  Again, I would be much happier if you 
>> seemed to be acknowledging the problem rather than explaining it 
>> away.
>
> uh oh. kill -9 is NEVER a good idea and will almost certainly corrupt 
> data in any database app (and many others) as it kills a process 
> UNCONDITIONALLY (without any possible intervention by the killed 
> process). I don't use Mac/Next systems since 1991, but as OS-X is 
> based on BSD, it is very unlikely to handle kill -9 differently.

I know what kill -9 does.  That's why I mentioned it - it's the worst 
case scenario.  And yes, I do expect database apps (not all apps) to be 
able to be kill-nined without corrupting data.  Heck, I expect to be 
able to kick the plug out of the wall and not corrupt data.  Losing the 
current transaction is to be expected, of course.