Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wiley!trwarcadia!simpson
From: simpson@trwarcadia.uucp (Scott Simpson)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Extended RDB vs OODB
Message-ID: <5259@wiley.UUCP>
Date: 16 Aug 89 23:21:17 GMT
References: <3560052@wdl1.UUCP> <408@odi.ODI.COM> <3324@rtech.rtech.com> <1989Aug11.143036.24703@odi.com> <1765@ethz.UUCP>
Sender: news@wiley.UUCP
Reply-To: simpson@trwarcadia.UUCP (Scott Simpson)
Organization: TRW Arcadia Project, Redondo Beach, CA
Lines: 44

>Dan Weinreb of Object Design writes:

>I stand by my statement, above.  The largest U.S. CASE company, Index
>Technologies, does not use any DBMS in its product.  They have
>carefully considered the question and decided that existing DBMS
>technology is inadequate for what they want to do.  The major ECAD
>companies do no use any RDBMS for anything, or at least not for
>anything at the heart of their systems.

	Index Technologies recently announced they have selected OB2,
Ontologic's C++ OODB for their products.  Ontologic is one of Object
Design's competitor.
	See "An Object-Oriented VLSI CAD Framework" by Rajiv Gupta,
Wesley H. Cheng, Rajesh Gupta, Ido Hardonag and Melvin A. Breuer in
the May 1989 IEEE Computer.

>Jack Orenstein of Object Design writes:

>Many OO DBMSs start with a programming language and add persistence
>and possibly semantic data modeling constructs.  Of the "first
>generation" OO DBMSs, Vbase started with an extension of C, GemStone
>started with Smalltalk, and Statice started with Lisp.  Object Design
>and other "second generation" companies are starting with C++.  The
>advantage of this approach is that application developers no longer
>have to worry about two type systems (one for the host language and
>one for the DBMS) and two namespaces. Also, the problems inherent in
>translating complex objects between host language structures and
>relations in the database disappear.

I believe that when you stick to straight C++, you also lose seamlessness
(that is, you must now use library calls rather than having persistence
built directly in your language).  C++ doesn't have keywords for persistence.
You could extend C++, but then it wouldn't be C++.  We use Ontologic's VBase
OODB.  This version had its own proprietary language that was seamless.
They dropped it due to the market's resistance to accepting a new language.
They are now coming out with a non-seamless C++ version called OB2.  We don't
know if we'll switch to it.  Our contract is ending.

	Lastly, say hi to Rich Fetik at Object Design.  I knew him when
he worked for Ontologic.  I was wondering where he went...
	Scott Simpson
	TRW Space and Defense Sector
	usc!trwarcadia!simpson  	(UUCP)
	trwarcadia!simpson@usc.edu	(Internet)