Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!amcad!stech!sysop
From: sysop@stech.UUCP (Jan Harrington)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Re^2: ORACLE
Message-ID: <481@stech.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 88 12:35:38 GMT
References: <611@ambush.UUCP>
Organization: Scholastech, Inc., Waltham, Mass.
Lines: 47

in article <611@ambush.UUCP>, kimcm@ambush.UUCP (Kim Chr. Madsen) says:
> 
> In article <7458@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>>I have only one question about Oracle.  Can't they come up with a better
>>report writer than RPT/RPF?  I've been writing reports by doing the queries
>>in SQL*Plus and piping the output through sed to *Unify* RPT!

RPT/RPF is admittedly a bear to use.  However, it is relatively flexible
and seems to be able to produce all but the most complex report layouts.
Students hate it because it's like learning another programming language,
but I wonder how well it works in industry ...

> 
> In article <880@ncrwic.Wichita.NCR.COM> dgrimmer@ncrwic.Wichita.NCR.COM (Dave Grimmer) writes:
>>It seems as if many of the components of ORACLE are not well integrated.
>>The product could benefit greatly with a comprehensive data dictionary.
>>PROGRESS Forever :-)
> 
> I fail to see why so many people seems to think that integrated
> products are so beautiful! The problem with integrated problems as I
> see it is that it puts unnecessary constraints on the user. The user
> of a system should be free to choose which tools he wants to use for a
> certain task. For example it makes me mad if I by using a database
> system are forced to use the systems report generator and are not free
> to choose my own -- the one I'm familiar with or the one I think does
> the job best. Likewise I would like the database to be accessable by
> other tools than just the database-system itself!

SQL*Forms is well integrated with SQL*Plus (assuming we're talking about
version 5.0).  However, it is very true the RPT/RPF is not consistent.
It uses a different "date" data type, for example, than SQL.  

Oracle does, by the way, have a data dictionary. The data dictionary tables
are listed in a table called "dtab".


Jan Harrington, sysop
Scholastech Telecommunications
UUCP: ihnp4!husc6!amcad!stech!sysop or allegra!stech!sysop
BITNET: JHARRY@BENTLEY

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