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From: john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Britton Lee's SQL Server: Anyone using it?
Message-ID: <463@newave.UUCP>
Date: 20 Jul 90 02:24:21 GMT
References: <1990Jul15.052332.18910@comspec.uucp>
Reply-To: john@newave.mn.org (John A. Weeks III)
Organization: NeWave Communications Ltd, Eden Prairie, MN
Lines: 54

In article <1990Jul15.052332.18910@comspec.uucp> daveb@comspec.uucp (dave berman) writes:
> Is anyone actually using one of Britton Lee's SQL Servers?

Many Britton Lee machines sold are to Metaphor DIS customers who use them
for departamental databases, mostly in the Consumer Package Industry (all
fortune 200 type companies).

I have worked as a contractor for a company that does consulting for Metaphor
DIS customers.  I have seen numerous BLI installations.

> I want to hear both good news and bad news. Everything I have seen about this
> suggests that it may be a dream come true, but I am looking for some live
> users, not salespeople (at least, not only sales people).

Perhaps too good to be true!  Britton Lee machines seem to produce accurate
results, but the hardware and the interfaces leave much to be desired.
One site that has 2 #200 and 2 #250 servers experiences hourly server resets.
This affects productivity quite a bit because it requires babysitting the
equipment and holding the users hands when they have problems.  The interface
is wierd because the Britton Lee uses its own internal query language, and
SQL is a shell implemented over the internal language.  There are some
things that do not translate well.  The result is that small changes in SQL
syntax or a slightly different approach to a problem results in large
unexpected changes in the runtime.  Also, everyone that I have talked with
that runs a BLI machine seems to agree that the tape drives are junk.

Although I do not know firsthand, the model 260 machines do not have
the reset problems of the earlier models, and the #280's are much better
machines all around.

On the plus side, BLI machines seem to be faster than Teredata machines
when doing very small queries and when working with very small databases.
BLI machines allow creating of scratch tables and do so very fast, where
as creating temporary scratch tables on Teredata or DB2 is a very slow
process.  This might affect your programming style.

> They call it SHARE BASE, and it is handled in Canada by Compushare Database
> Systems Inc, (President David J Killins). It was designed, in part, by Dr Bob
> Taylor, who is now the Executive Vice President of R&D for Britton Lee.

The major problem with Britton Lee is Mr. Britton Lee...according to people
that I know that used to work for him.  Mr Lee is very smart, but he
sometimes insists on doing things the wrong way.  The fact that Britton Lee
attempted to create a new database language standard (even though SQL is
fast catching on in the corporate database area) ended up setting Britton
Lee back quite a bit.

-john-

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