Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!decwrl!nsc!voder!blia!miket From: miket@blia.BLI.COM (Mike Tossy) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: Britton Lee's SQL Server: Anyone using it? Message-ID: <12119@blia.BLI.COM> Date: 23 Jul 90 17:04:25 GMT References: <1990Jul15.052332.18910@comspec.uucp> <463@newave.UUCP> Organization: Britton Lee, Los Gatos, CA Lines: 67 Just a few factual corrections: In article <463@newave.UUCP>, john@newave.UUCP (John A. Weeks III) writes: > > 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). > Re: the name. Britton Lee became ShareBase, which just merged with Teradata. Re: The Metaphor/ShareBase (aka 'Britton Lee') association. The OEM relationship terminated when Metaphor signed a $10M development pact with IBM and started recommending DB2. (Not that I'm implying a relationship between those two events... :-) ) The OEM relationship covered only our very first line of products (which is now obsolete) and never included either of the current product lines. > One site that has 2 #200 and 2 #250 servers experiences hourly server resets. These are NOT ShareBase products. These are Metaphor products which include some OEM components provided by ShareBase. > 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. Our first product line used the QUEL langauge, and Metaphor choose to provide a shell to translate SQL to the QUEL internal langauge. > Also, everyone that I have talked with that runs a BLI machine seems to > agree that the tape drives are junk. ShareBase did not provide the tape drives on these machines. Metaphor OEMed tape drives from a different vendor than ShareBase. > 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. ... As David Masterson (uunet!cimshop!davidm) pointed out there is no 'Mr. Britton Lee'. His speculation that you mean Dr. Bob Epstein, now of Sybase, seems plausible. > ... 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. The decision to use QUEL rather than SQL was made in 1978 and clearly, given 12 years of hindsight, a mistake. We have made considerable effort to undo that damage by being the FIRST (AND SO FAR ONLY) vendor to pass the U.S. Federal Government's ANSI Standard SQL validation test suite. ADVERTISEMENT: Ask your vendor if they can pass the ANSI SQL Standard validation suite. Ask for a copy of the validation report! -- Teradata Corporation Mike Tossy ShareBase miket@blia.bli.com 14600 Wichester Blvd (408) 378-7575 ext2200 Los Gatos, CA 95030 (Formerly: Britton Lee, Inc.) These are only my opinions.