Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!gatech!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!gfx
From: GFX@PSUVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Large Scale DataBase
Message-ID: <52305GFX@PSUVM>
Date: 9 Sep 88 01:32:11 GMT
Organization: The Pennsylvania State University - Computation Center
Lines: 23

We use a rather large database (500,000 + records) holding  a few
variables ( 25 +/-) related to industrial establishments.  We manage
it with SAS on an IBM mainframe, but are curious as to whether such
a dataBase could be installed in an HyperCard environment to provide
interactive queries (a rarity, but nonetheless...)  Our major motive
in doing so would be to take advantage of the (apparently) very fast
searching capabilities of HyperCard.  (in most instances, interactive
users do not have the establishment ID number, and therefore must resort
to subString searches to locate the appropriate records.  VERY inefficient
at the present time)


I would be delighted to hear from anyone with similar experience, or
from anyone able to formulate educated guesses...

What we would have in mind at this time would be a single field per
record, concatenating all the relevant information in less than, say,
250 characters.  Basic questions are: what stack size would it mean?
Is CD-ROM an alternative we should consider? (there would NOT be more
than one site)  Can we build the stack automatically from an ASCII file?
What would be the expected search time?  Any other approach you think is
superior?

Stephane