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History of DFSORT, SYNCSORT & ICETOOL

PostPosted: Sat Apr 25, 2015 5:25 pm
by arpitpatel01
Hi,

I was looking for the history of DFSORT, SYNCSORT & ICETOOL (How and when they were developed and released, Team members, Performance comparision, etc.)

However, i did not find satisfying answers to my question.

I just found out that DFSORT was developed by IBM and SYNCSORT by SYNCSORT Inc.

Kindly update with the correct information regarding this!

Thanks in advance!! :)

Re: History of DFSORT, SYNCSORT & ICETOOL

PostPosted: Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:29 pm
by BillyBoyo
Why do you want to do this? You've got two choices: contact the suppliers and ask; do the research yourself. You'll be going back over 40 years.

Re: History of DFSORT, SYNCSORT & ICETOOL

PostPosted: Sat Apr 25, 2015 7:33 pm
by steve-myers
Stage 1 – OS/360 sort/merge

The sort/merge developed for OS/360 was actually a very good product. It was reasonably fast, and reasonably easy to use. And, like the rest of OS/360, it was “free,” and semi-open source

Stage 2 – Syncsort

Syncsort was very obviously developed from OS/360 sort/merge. It was supposed to be faster.

Stage 3 – DFSORT

DFSORT was IBM's response to Syncsort.

Since then the two products have been in what appears to an unbiased observer a near tit for tat race to improve performance and add features to the point where the products have essentially added the capabilities of a report generator type program.

It is difficult - perhaps impossible - to compare their performance. I suspect that in some environments DFSORT will be a little better, and Syncsort will be a little better in some other environments.