Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!percy!m2xenix!quagga!hippo!bsms From: bsms@hippo.ru.ac.za (Malcolm Sainsbury) Newsgroups: comp.databases Subject: Re: PICK dbms/os on UNIX Message-ID: Date: 14 Jun 91 20:33:47 GMT References: <10595@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Jun10.223018.26414@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> <10628@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <1991Jun11.224403.9172@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> Sender: usenet@quagga.ru.ac.za (Rhodes University NNTP server) Organization: Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa Lines: 34 In <1991Jun11.224403.9172@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> geckhard@ringer.cs.utsa.edu (Gary Eckhardt) writes: >An Example: In PICK, you use the dictionary approach to data, specifying >what that data looks like via formats, etc. The only limitation was that >a dictionary could not go beyond the boundaries of the data file, i.e. I >could not include a dictionary item that was actually a data element from >another data file. To me, that was limiting, and obsolete, because with >SQL you can develop Views that will let you do just that. Sorry you are way off on this one. We have used PICK for about ten years and this is precisely one of its strong points. Including a dictionary item that is an element of another file is about the easiest thing you can do in the PICK database. The range of 'correlatives' extends way past that kind of simple operation. You have been misinformed on that one. I seriously doubt that you have actually used PICK if you couldn't manage to do this. >Working with a 9-Track tape drive on the Honeywell system, it took more than >72 hours to complete a file restore. Working with a 9-Track tape and the >.... 5 days > >The database was approximately 80 Megabytes or so. We were close to >filling up a 100 meg disk. This inefficiency has been demonstrated >to be the same across two different platforms that I've seen it run >on. Again this is strange to me. I dumped out 150 MB onto a pretty slow streamer tape on a PC version of PICK this afternoon and it took about 30 minutes. That is slow admittedly, but *nothing* like the figures quoted here which are bizarre. I simply don't believe them. -- Malcolm Sainsbury - Dept of Business Information Systems - Rhodes University Internet: bsms@hippo.ru.ac.za Phone: +27 [0]461 22023 xt 244 uucp: ..!uunet!m2xenix!quagga!hippo!bsms Fax: +27 [0]461 25049