1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3743

The next generation of the big database that Meng He mentioned is located in Phoenix Ridge, north of Shengli Fort. However, this place is quite secretive, and you have to take a carriage into the mountain first, and then walk for a while after getting off the carriage to reach your destination.

Although there were not many armed guards along the way, Shi Diwen was sure that this place was not accessible to ordinary people. Because the database was located in a cave, and there was a high wall hundreds of feet outside the cave, isolating it from the outside world.

"This cave was reported to us by the Li people in the early years. The Executive Committee originally wanted to use it as a shelter during special periods, but it was never used. Later, when the plan for backing up the large database was formulated, this place was selected to store data and used as the next generation of database."

Meng He led the way and introduced the situation here to Shi Diwen.

The environment in the cave has obviously been artificially modified. Not only is a flat road paved leading to the depths, but there are also several parallel pipes installed on the cave walls.

Shi Diwen estimated that there were ventilation pipes and water pipes for firefighting. After all, there were a lot of paper documents stored in the data storage area deep in the cave, and if a fire broke out, it would need to be put out immediately.

Shi Diwen guessed that there should be a communication cable directly leading to Victory Fort, so that the outside world can use a wired telephone to issue instructions to query information here.

As they were talking, the two had already reached the depths of the cave. The temperature here was obviously lower than outside, but the cave was not humid at all. Shi Diwen even felt that the air was drier than outside.

Meng He then confirmed his feeling: "The natural humidity here is nearly half that of the outside of the cave. In addition, we have used a lot of ventilation and dehumidification methods, so the air is drier, which is convenient for long-term storage of paper documents."

After walking to a depth of a hundred feet, the front suddenly opened up and there was a huge space of several dozen feet in radius.

However, this natural space has been divided into several small spaces by brick walls built later, which are connected by passages. Steel fire doors are installed at the entrance to each small space. It seems that a lot of thought was put into fire protection measures when this place was built.

Meng He continued to introduce: "Each small space here is equivalent to a small database. We copy and back up the data and store them in different categories. Look, this is where the data directory is stored."

What appeared in front of Meng He were rows of tall bookshelves. These bookshelves were all made of iron. In addition to their excellent load-bearing capacity, they also minimized the possibility of fire.

Shi Diwen roughly counted and found that there were at least hundreds of neatly bound file books on each bookshelf. Each file book was a directory, corresponding to the documents stored in a certain space in the cave.

There were dozens of such bookshelves as far as he could see, just like a small library. Several staff members walked through the bookshelves, taking files from the shelves and adding a few notes from time to time, apparently constantly improving the catalog here.

Seeing this, Shi Diwen asked how the process of reviewing the documents was carried out.

Meng He explained: "The principle is actually similar to the previous computer server. When receiving an external instruction to look up information, it will first look for the location of the relevant document in the directory, then fetch the file, extract the required content, and then have a dedicated person deliver it to the place where the instruction was issued."

"Of course, this process that relies entirely on manual operation will be much slower than using computers before, and the query efficiency cannot be compared. But it is better to have something to use than nothing, don't you think?" Shi Diwen had to admit that Meng He had a point. Although this way of searching for information seemed very primitive and inefficient in the eyes of time travelers like them, the various materials stored here were of immeasurable value in this era. Even if the process was time-consuming, it would not have much impact on the value of the information.

But he immediately thought of a question: "Now that the Executive Committee has moved to Hangzhou, if the instructions issued are not only to query information, but also to call up the drawings and materials here, then it cannot be sent to Hangzhou via telegram and can only be transmitted manually?"

Meng He nodded and said, "At this stage, this is the only way to solve the problem. It's too slow, but we already have other solutions, but it will take some time to implement them."

Shi Diwen then asked what the new solution was. He thought Meng He's solution was either to restart the traditional method of 800-mile express transmission, or to wait until an airport was built in the future and transmit files between the two places by aircraft, but Meng He's answer was beyond his expectations.

Meng He’s answer was actually not surprising at all. It was to build another identical backup database in Hangzhou so that the Executive Committee could use it nearby.

This solution may seem simple and crude, but it is the best solution that can be achieved at present. It not only solves the problem of information transmission timeliness, but also takes into account the actual situation that the large database cannot be moved as a whole to Hangzhou, thousands of miles away.

Meng He said: "It's still a little late to move the capital to Hangzhou. If it was a dozen years earlier, maybe we could have moved all the servers in Victory Castle there. But now, let alone moving, we don't even dare to unplug the plugs. God knows if those servers can be powered on again after a power outage. The Executive Committee doesn't dare to take this risk."

Shi Diwen coughed dryly and said, "More than a decade ago, we hadn't taken over Hangzhou yet, so why did we have to move... By the way, why didn't we just move the database in this cave directly to Hangzhou?"

Meng He glared and said, "Don't underestimate this place. In order to meet the environmental standards for storing documents, this cave took several years to complete. Let me ask you, is there any ready-made place in Hangzhou?"

Shi Diwen was speechless for a moment. There was indeed no ready-made place in Hangzhou that could house such a super-large paper database. If one were to be built according to the standards of this cave, it would probably take two to three years to complete.

Meng He continued, "It's not enough to back up important data only once. We need to back it up twice to be safe. From now on, we will have one copy in Sanya and one copy in Hangzhou. That will be fine."

Shi Diwen thought to himself that he would have to bring up the matter of the backup database being implemented in Hangzhou to the Executive Committee and urge the project to be implemented as soon as possible. Otherwise, after the Victory Castle database dies, the efficiency of querying information will probably be unbearably slow.

After finishing the tour and walking out of the cave, Shi Diwen also thanked Meng He for his hard work.

Meng He waved his hands and said, "I'm actually fine, I just give orders. The ones who really work hard are the people working below. Since they entered this department, they have basically been isolated from the world. If possible, I hope the Executive Committee can give them a raise and improve their benefits."

Meng Heti's request was not excessive, so Shi Diwen agreed immediately.

Access to the big database means access to Hai Han’s most core secrets, and the confidentiality level of these staff members is undoubtedly quite high.

In order to strictly guard state secrets, they will never have many opportunities to contact the outside world in their lives, let alone become famous. Even when they are with their families, they must strictly abide by the confidentiality discipline and never mention their work, until the moment they take their last breath.