Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!hplabs!oracle!rbradbur
From: rbradbur@oracle.UUCP (Robert Bradbury)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Database Company Contacts
Message-ID: <244@oracle.UUCP>
Date: 18 Feb 88 11:53:17 GMT
References: <1408@bucsb.UUCP> <30175UH2@PSUVM> <24028@cca.CCA.COM> <823@mdbs.UUCP> <33672UH2@PSUVM>
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Lines: 45
Summary: post-relational

In article <33672UH2@PSUVM>, UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
> In article <823@mdbs.UUCP>, kbc@mdbs.UUCP (Kevin Castleberry) says:
> >
> >MDBS III (a post-relational high performance dbs)
>              ~~~~~~^~~~~~~~~
>                    |
>           What does this mean?
>      

It means the vendor has developed a non-standard interface to a database
which represents their view of how a user should interact with his/her data.
It also means that under the pretense of providing a better interface
the vendor stands a good chance of locking you into their product.
(How do you spell IMS?  MVS?  etc. ...)

I'm only giving half a smiley on the above because it is one of my
pet peeves.  There are probably a dozen different "common" database
products across UNIX and MSDOS machines.  Applications written in one
product have little or no portability to a different product.  The result
is that you are locked into that vendor, can't follow the improvements
in hardware/software technology as quickly as you might be able to and
scream bloody murder all over the net when you discover you can't migrate
from version 3 of the xyz product to version 4 without 5 man-years
of re-coding.

I'm always amazed at the number of people who carry a UNIX bible
in one hand and a proprietary dbms manual in the other.  The terms
"post-relational" and "4GL" have no "real" definitions.  People who
believe all that advertising hype had better be prepared to spend
a long cold winter in the cabin with that vendor.

This is not to say that SQL is an ultimate solution (after all we have
seen enough debate about what SQL can't do).  I do feel that it
is a good place to start and will evolve as people become more
aware of its limitations and push for a more robust language.
At the current time though SQL is the only thing which gives
you a fighting chance of coding portable applications.

All of this is not to dump on MDBS, it at least runs on MSDOS, UNIX
and VMS which is a great deal more than DBase can do.  That at least
gives you a fighting chance of migrating your application to more
powerful machines and O.S. as your needs grow.
-- 
Robert Bradbury
Oracle Corporation
(206) 784-9726                            hplabs!oracle!rbradbur