The "Passbook" to PDF Magic
Remember the days of standing in line at the bank just to update your passbook? The printer would make that zzzt-zzzt sound, and if the ink was low, you couldn’t even read your balance. Today, whether you use SBI YONO , HDFC NetBanking , or ICICI iMobile , you just click "Download Statement," and boom —a 6-month history appears on your screen as a neat PDF. But have you ever wondered how the bank does that? Think about it: A bank like SBI has over 45 crore customers . If every customer generates a 3-page statement every month, that is 135 crore pages of data every single month. If the bank saved these as normal PDF files on a computer, their hard drives would crash in minutes. Plus, finding your specific statement among 135 crore others would take hours. So, how do they do it in milliseconds? They use a "Digital Librarian" called IBM CMOD . The Story of the "Giant Roll" Imagine a massive printing press. Instead of p...