Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!decwrl!sgi!shinobu!odin!hargrove From: hargrove@harlie.sgi.com (Mark Hargrove) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: RDBMS sux Message-ID: Date: 9 Nov 89 22:14:15 GMT References: <860@anasaz.UUCP> Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc, Mountain View, CA Lines: 35 In article emuleomo@paul.rutgers.edu (Emuleomo) writes: >What he wants is this... >"Let me see the 1st ten people on our mailing list in alphabetical order!" >or something in that regard. >If the DBMS uses the names of these people as the INDEX, this query becomes >*very* trivial. In dBASE/Foxbase etc.. you may write > >USE MAILING index names >LIST NEXT 10 > >The DBMS should search for and retrieve ONLY THE 1st TEN! > >Again, what you need is a NON-SQL DBMS! or one that marries both like >dBASE IV v1.0 attempted to do. Yeah, I think I agree here. SQL is just a tool, and it sounds like you're trying to use embedded SQL (or a lousy 4GL) for something it doesn't do well. What you're trying to do is *perfectly reasonable*, and if SQL doesn't do it well, use another tool. Unify's ACCELL 4GL environment, for example, has an attribute that can be set called FIND_LIMIT, which controls the cardinality of a FIND (Query) operation. IF you set it at, say, 20, it will get the first 20 records of the found set, then fetch the next 20 when the user (via the application) wants the next set, etc. This same functionality could also be implemented in Unify's C-HLI. How about some ideas from you lurkers at Ingres, Oracle and Sybase? How would *you* solve this absolutely reasonable problem with your product? -- =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Mark Hargrove Silicon Graphics, Inc. email: hargrove@harlie.corp.sgi.com 2011 N.Shoreline Drive voice: 415-962-3642 Mt.View, CA 94039