Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!crdgw1!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: status of Ingres Message-ID: Date: 3 Nov 90 17:52:55 GMT References: <2987@canisius.UUCP> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 50 In-reply-to: pavlov@canisius.UUCP's message of 2 Nov 90 07:06:02 GMT On 2 Nov 90 07:06:02 GMT, pavlov@canisius.UUCP (Greg Pavlov) said: pavlov> In article , pavlov> hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes: hedrick> [ ... pleased that a lot of small problems with Ingres are hedrick> corrected in Ingres 6.3 ... ] pavlov> [ ... having hell with Ingres 6.3 ... ] pavlov> The state of INGRES 6 on our chosen platforms - DEC RISC-based pavlov> machines - and the company's lack of accountability and pavlov> rsponsibility for its product has, without exaggeration, has pavlov> come close to destroying the credibility and worth of our pavlov> organization. Because you have chosen the wrong platforms. Sorry about saying that. DEC 5000, 58000, etc... systems are running essentially ALPHA or BETA system software (4.0 is still quite loose), compilers (although 2.1 seems to be less buggy than previous releases), and hardware (the processor boards seem to be fairly buggy). In other words they are as full of holes as emmenthal. I am suprised you have managed to get Ingres running at all. I know of DEC RISC systems that crash with virtually nothing running on them. Let me say that you have been somewhat unwise to become the guinea pigs for DEC in runnning a major database application as a test of their newly released systems. If you want reliable operation don't use as platforms for major and complex application packages machines that have been rushed to market yesterday. Hey, as an example just Sun moving to SunOS 4.1 on the same hardware has broken so many things in so many little ways... Also, don't expect that such (necessarily quickly ported) packages will run reliably on such a shifty base. Even on much more mature systems many such packages tax them hard enough that they have to be carefully adapted to work around the bugs of the underlying platform. This is an essential process in making a large program reliable to the end user, and I can understand that DECsystem Ingres may not have yet been so adapted, also because Ultrix and hardware releases are incessant and very different from each other. DEC RISC systems, hardware and software, are very good price/performance systems, but not yet reliability wise. You pay your money, you take your chances. Don't bad mouth Ingres, which may or may not deserve it, without considering the other, more obvious, possibilities. -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk