Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!milhow1!how
From: how@milhow1.UU.NET (Mike Howard)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: /rdb
Keywords: relation database written at sh level
Message-ID: <275@milhow1.UU.NET>
Date: 7 Aug 89 16:58:56 GMT
References: <267@phavl.UUCP>
Reply-To: how@milhow1.UUNET.uu.net (Mike Howard)
Organization: Miller/Howard Investments, Malden-on-Hudson, NY
Lines: 32

In article <267@phavl.UUCP> rob@phavl.UUCP (Robert Ransbottom) writes:
>
>Several people have asked for info regarding "/rdb", so here:
>
 [deleted stuff]
>
>Pricing is moderate????? about $500??????

I bought a copy a while back (1-2 years) for Xenix 286 @ $900 or so.
IMHO, it is not particularly inexpensive for what you get.

>
>My knowledge is limited -- if the book had had " with /rdb" tacked on the
>end of the title, I wouldn't have bought it.
>-- 
> ...!uunet!phavl!rob              Robert Ransbottom

My knowledge is limited also, however I have used /rdb for quite a few odds
and ends in our business, but I would not use it for anything serious projects.
The main thing that it did for me was avoid writing awk scripts for everything
and to structure my data file a little more rigidly.  Most of /rdb's
``commands'' are really procedures which eat a command line and create
an awk script and then spawn an awk process to do the work.

The copy I purchased contains a ``forms editor'' modelled after vi - meaning
multi-mode, no backup, ...  It can be made to work and apparently has been by
other people, but it is definitely not state-of-the art.  I would expect that
any user would have to be trained in order to use ``ve'' - which is unreasonable
today when almost everything can be menuized with context sensitive help & etc.
-- 
Mike Howard
uunet!milhow1!how or milhow1!how@uunet.uu.net