Viewing block chains from the development of data records (from zero-start block 139)

The development of the block chain is actually the history of the development of data records, today we will talk about the history of data recording development, a glimpse of this spiraling trend

Data is a symbolic representation of an objective thing, an unprocessed raw material used to represent an objective thing, such as graphic symbols, numbers, letters, and so on. Or, data is the fact and concept of physical observation, a description of places, events, other objects or concepts in the real world. A data record is a complete set of related information that corresponds to information in a data source.

Before the invention of the computer, human beings have been exploring and developing various methods of data recording, from the earliest ropes, the wall to later the bamboo and paper printing, the importance of data recording for the human. Data recording has been in the pursuit of convenience, communication, forensic, paper, printing, seal these ancient inventions correspond to the above three kinds of data records on the pursuit.

In the computer age, data recording has made a qualitative leap in convenience and communication, especially after the popularization of PC, people can easily record a variety of data and dissemination of data, a variety of digital acquisition equipment and network after the popularization of data records is on a new level, in the process of data recording can be the right to identify the people have been plagued , in order to ensure the convenience, communication, and the unification of the three people have come up with various methods, mainly divided into three stages

Process and Data integration phase

In the age of tape and punched cards as data storage, at that time in order to ensure the operation of the program and easy to operate, the program (code) and data is one, the complete program contains code snippets and data segments, this design affects the subsequent various executable program structure, each program has its own exclusive code snippets and data segments, Through the code to achieve the control and management of data, the program itself is both code and data.

The advantage of this design is that the data is used exclusively and the copy program can be transmitted the author of the program means the ownership of the data, the initial realization of the right to be in the digital world, you can programmatically record, manage, calculate various data, and spread it, through the program to run other people can get data records and operations results.

Of course, the drawbacks of this design are also obvious, program and data integration caused the inconvenience of data use, any data modifications need to modify the program, reload tapes and punched cards, so this phase of the existence of a very short time, but also gave birth to a great change in the digital world, the process and data separation, and has been used to date.

Program and data separation

After the separation of the program and data, the logic is clearer, the program can load different data to form different calculation results, for the same data can be processed by different procedures, improve the ease of use of data, modify the program no longer need to repackage data, both can be separated to carry out. But the separation of program and data also means the separation of two ownership, the program and the data have their own way of authentication.

In order to facilitate the management of data, people invented the file system and later database system, which is to better manage the way data records. Through the file system, people can manage all kinds of code and data, facilitate the use and dissemination of data, through the database and later relational database, people to the data structure management, improve the data search and utilization efficiency.

As more and more data is being managed, more and more important, people found that the data recorded on the duplication and accessibility of contradictions, some data can not be spread at will, their use must be in the scope of authentication, because at that time the network is not popular, data authentication depends mainly on the binding of hardware devices, Is that the data is limited to a specific physical device, I believe that the age of friends have to deal with a specific business to a specific machine experience.

Also experienced during the host phase, when the code and data exist in a large equipment, this equipment unified management of data and code, through the user system, different users of different data authentication.

Although the program and data separation, but for some sensitive data needs authentication, data and physical devices are not separated, until the network development, this contradiction is increasingly prominent, in order to solve these contradictions, people naturally think of similar host central data recording and processing methods.

Central Stage

The central concept is not the first network development goal, in the beginning of the network Development, NetWare network operating system and Uinx are based on peer network design, the so-called Peer-to-peer network is the network structure of each node is equal, can provide data to each other, This kind of structure is advantageous to the distribution processing and the distribution control realization, the earliest Internet design is also toward this direction diligently, the center is not the network development original intention.

However, due to the way the Peer-to-peer network is not conducive to data management, business implementation is difficult, so people design a customer/service model, so the unified management of data nodes into the server, the use of data nodes into the client, this completely reference to the organization of human society to solve the data recorded on the dissemination of, replicable, The contradiction of the right to be forensic.

The identification of the data into the customer's right to authentication, the centralized server can effectively control the replication and propagation of data records, at the same time, the data for authentication, through the central way data can be on demand in different physical devices flow, solve the data is limited to a certain physical problem.

Because of this centralized approach based on customer service, can be very good to solve the problems encountered before, the fact that the structure of this approach is simple and easy to achieve business, so we see a variety of data services in the way, the central infiltration of our lives and business of all aspects, through the central we can easily access time, Get map data, implement transactions, and so on, but few people think about the problem.

While we are currently in the midst of a central data recording development phase, but insight has found the drawbacks of the central data recording methods, the central means that there is a device or a group of devices with all the data records of the complete, and the client will always obtain a subset of data, this does not conform to the network design of the first peer concept, There are now also forward-looking views that the Internet is becoming more and more central to the development of interconnection and so on.

All things are spiraling up, centrality does solve a lot of problems, but this is not the final form of data recording development, Peer-to-peer Network development, cryptography progress, and the prospect of central to see a network designed to meet the original intention, but also in line with the convenience of data recording, replicable, The new development direction of the unification of the three-right, this direction is, block chain.

about this article

Block chain can let the network restore its original design goal, although this is difficult, but the easy thing has what meaning. You can also share this article to make more people concerned, your support and encouragement is my greatest motivation

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