Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-lcc!unisoft!mtxinu!rtech!squid!edg
From: edg@squid.rtech.com (Ed Goldman)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: MDBS Inc.'s MDBS III post-*relational* ??????
Message-ID: <2477@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 6 Oct 88 22:34:16 GMT
References: <BROMAN.88Oct5090037@schroeder.nosc.mil>
Sender: news@rtech.rtech.com
Reply-To: edg@squid.UUCP (Ed Goldman)
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc.
Lines: 36

In article <BROMAN.88Oct5090037@schroeder.nosc.mil> broman@nosc.mil writes:
>What reading?  All I know about this is in:
>   Bonczek, Holsapple, and Whinston,
>   Micro Database Management: practical techniques for application development,
>   Academic Press (HBJ), 1984.
> [stuff deleted] ...
>They use MDBS III prominently
>in the book and in an associated course, sounding almost commercial
>in their promotion thereof.

I believe Holsapple is/was the president of MDBS or the founder or something
like that I can't remember exactly.  I'm not sure sure about the other 2
but I wouldn't be suprised at an MDBS association there either.

>Unfortunately, the juicy details about how extended networks beautifully
>support representation of many-to-many relations I didn't get to.
>
>Any one else study this?

I can't say I've read the book, but I have developed an MDBS III application.
It's been awhile since I was involved with this network DBMS stuff, but 
it seems to me the extensions to CODASYL in MDBS III involved the features
of creating many-to-many sets and recursive sets.  Also there's security and
validation features which may go beyond a strict CODASYL system, but I'm not
well-versed enough in CODASYL to say fer sure.  

All-in-all MDBS III is a pretty nice DBMS, but it really depends on what on
what your system requires.  My opinion was that its pretty fast, but rigid.
Rigid in the sense that you must account for your db structure in the code
and in the sense that on the fly queries are tougher (than relational) if
not impossible.

To answer a previous poster:  MDBS is not E-R (if E-R is what you're looking
for you may want to check out ZIM).

-edg-