Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Will the Next sell?
Message-ID: <89328.092117UH2@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 24 Nov 89 14:21:16 GMT
References: <4283@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <8699@cbmvax.UUCP>
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Organization: Penn State University
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Comparing Sparcs to NeXTs on price alone won't work unless you create
similar software configurations.  An at that, I don't think you can
get as much software for the Sparc if you adhere to NeXTs strategy that
it be well integrated and offer a consistent interface.

Take one example, the relational database server.  On the NeXT, developers
are *supposed* to realize tat every box will have a database server, and
therefore *use* it to manage the application's data.  If developers do this
then it becaomes very easy for future applications to access any application's
data (if authorized, of course).

In fact, I haven't seen this happen yet, but I can imagine it.  Suppose the
Email software used the DB server to keep track of the incoming mail,
sender, size in bytes, date of arrival, and so on.  The, if an adminstrator
wanted to query the behavior of the email system, any machine on the
network could easily be used to create a query, e.g. how much mail is being
sent to Joe might be something like Select sum(msgsize) sendername From
Maillog@joe group by sendername sort by sum(msgsize).

Better yet, if a SPREADSHEET needed the data, it could send the query.
You have noticed that the spreadsheet promised comes from an important
database company, haven't you.

                              lee