Toward the end of the Bell system, AT&T used Unix to run the control plane of phone switches and also to do administrative tasks for the phone network. I remember a paper in the Bell Systems Technical Journal where they did auditing of billing records for the whole U.S. with a set of tools kinda like grep, awk, etc. but with binary-format data records.
There are situations where operating systems get behind the 8 ball and there isn't a perfect thing to do. Giving up to prevent data corruption is one choice, but trying to soldier on and do the best you can is another.
Toward the end of the Bell system, AT&T used Unix to run the control plane of phone switches and also to do administrative tasks for the phone network. I remember a paper in the Bell Systems Technical Journal where they did auditing of billing records for the whole U.S. with a set of tools kinda like grep, awk, etc. but with binary-format data records.
There are situations where operating systems get behind the 8 ball and there isn't a perfect thing to do. Giving up to prevent data corruption is one choice, but trying to soldier on and do the best you can is another.