Why did the old RAID database use a signed 16-bit integer for its record count? Why not unsigned, or a 32-bit integer?

Raymond Chen

Some time ago, I noted that the RAID defect tracking system from the early 1990’s had a limit of 32767 records. I noted that for large projects, like Windows 95, a new database had to be created when the bug count limit was reached. Why did the authors of RAID pick a signed 16-bit integer as their record counter? Why not an unsigned integer, which doubled the range, or a 32-bit integer, which took you to two billion?

You have to remember that all decisions are made in a particular context. At the time, bugs were tracked in a text file that everybody edited.¹ I don’t know exactly, but let’s say that there were a few hundred bugs in that file for Windows 1.0. The goal was to solve the problems and limitations of that system:

  • Concurrent editing resulted in changes being lost.
  • No reporting. “How many bugs are assigned to Chris?”
  • No auditing. “Who edited the bug priority?”
  • Low capacity.

A database with a front-end interface could solve these problems. And as for capacity, well, you’re going to be running it on an IBM PC with 640KB of memory and an 8086 processor, so a 16-bit integer is a natural size for that architecture. And your target audience is a large project with over a hundred issues. A 16-bit integer will handle that with two orders of magnitude to spare!

Why not an unsigned int? What a ridiculous question. Windows 1.0 had a few hundred issues in its defect tracker. Reaching 32,767 records was unthinkable. You’ve already beaten the target by a factor of over 300 with the most natural data type for the language you’re using. And if you use a back-of-the-envelope calculation that each record is about 1KB in size, your 20MB hard drive won’t be able to hold more than 20,000 records anyway.

As I noted in the original article, the authors of the RAID bug tracking system had no intention of having their little hack become the de facto bug tracking system for the entire company for over a decade. They just wanted a way to track bugs in their day job in a manner that’s a bit better than a shared text file. If they had known that they were designing the future of Microsoft internal bug tracking, they would have been too scared to write it!

¹ Sure, a text file seems unsophisticated, but it does the job, and it’s a step up from using the inside of a Domino pizza box top (unnumbered page 20).

1 comment

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  • cheong00 0

    The pizza box top is great, dual monitor was not that common at the time.

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