Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!decwrl!shelby!lindy!liemandt
From: liemandt@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Joe Liemandt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Sybase on the NeXT
Message-ID: <8194@lindy.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 23 Feb 90 10:11:57 GMT
References: <4223@cayman.COM> <9453@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: liemandt@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Joe Liemandt)
Reply-To: liemandt@lindy.Stanford.EDU (Joe Liemandt)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 119

In article <9453@portia.Stanford.EDU> duggie@jessica.Stanford.EDU
(Doug Felt) w\
rites:
>In article <4223@cayman.COM> chris@cayman.COM (Chris North) writes:
>>  I was about to create a simply database using 4D on the mac when
our new
>>NeXT arrived and I noticed that it has Sybase on it.  Has anyone
used Sybase
>>on the NeXT?  Is it reliable?  Is there any sample code other there other
>>than what NeXT puts on the machine?

I have worked with both 4D on the mac and sybase.  I am also looking
at ways of connecting them, but that is currently impossible, at least
until Sybase releases the network version for the next.

>Recently I've been looking at 4D, Oracle for Macintosh, and Sybase on
>the NeXT for a simple but good-sized (30K records, 100K subrecords)
>database.  I have only about 4 weeks worth of experience with the Mac
>databases combined, and about the same with Sybase, so I'm a relative
>novice.

>I don't like 4D.  The documentation (once you get past the startup
>manual) is poor, the program has bugs, the layout editor is a pain to
>use, and the user interface has glitches and lacks features.  The
>language is interpreted (currently) and thus slow, however the
>database itself is faster than the other two for the kind of searches
>I need to do.  Although you can call your own code from 4D and, I
>presume, get around some of the problems, this is not documented in
>the manuals you get from Acius.  There is apparently some activity on
>Compuserve, but I don't have access...

I have used 4D since it came out and am not as negative.  But in any case,
with the correct optimization, Sybase should be faster than 4D in
almost every search.


>Oracle for Macintosh might be ok, but again the documentation has
>problems.  In this case there seems to be no 'administrative guide' to
>tell you about the system tables, space management, backups and so on.
>The documentation on calling Oracle from Hypercard, or from your own
>code, seems complete but I haven't really explored it.  My problem
>with Oracle was that the speed seems too slow for my kind of searches.
>I also had problems dropping indexes and recovering from glitches,
>and the loader program crashed a few times.

I have used both Oracle for Macintosh (Hypercard front end) and Oracle
for 4D and have hated both.  Had trouble with reliability.  Was much
too hard to use.


>Sybase has, in contrast, been very easy to use.  Here my problem has
>been not lack of documentation, but that some of it doesn't print out
>properly.  Also there is a lot of it.  The demo programs have been a
>big help and showed me pretty much all I needed to get started-- there
>are a few conflicts with Objective-C include files, but otherwise I
>have had no trouble calling Sybase from Appkit programs.  The loader
>program supplied with Sybase is also *much* faster-- I loaded my test
>database in about ten minutes, whereas each of the other databases
>took over ten hours.  Occasionally I have wedged myself by running out
>of space, but enough searching through the manuals has always turned
>up a solution.

Sybase is a nice engine, but building an interface, even with IB is
harder in my opinion. sybase needs to release their APT Workbench for
the next.

>I don't know much about maintenance issues, not having dealt with that
>yet, but suspect Sybase will be far and away the easiest in terms of
>backup and recovery from failures.  4D, for example, was unable to
>read a record (media failure, I suspect) and prompted me to delete
>it-- but left the index for that record, so I was stuck with a
>glitched index.  I also had problems with Oracle as I mentioned.
>Sybase hasn't given me any problems yet, but I doubt they'd be any
>worse.

I have found sybase to be very reliable.  No problems with data loss.
I have lost data in both 4D and Oracle.

>I am not planning on providing multiuser access so have nothing to say
>in this regard.  I seem to remember a previous posting mentioning
>limitations on the 'free' Sybase bundled with the NeXT, but I don't
>know for sure.  I can't imagine the Mac would be any better, though.

I think the license says "5 next users".  You cannot access it from a
different platform until sybase releases the network module mentioned above.
In a multi-user situation, Sybase will be much faster than 4D.  Oracle
for the Mac cannot run multi-user unless you purchase the full Oracle
engine for another platform (big bucks).

>I'd also like to know who else has used Sybase and what kind of
>experience they've had with it.  I need to make a decision fairly soon
>and would like to go for the NeXT despite the lack of a color screen.
>How has Sybase performed under real use?

I have nothing but good to say about sybase.  I know of someone who
runs multi-gig databases with sybase without problem.  I would just be
concerned about development productivity without front end tools. What
I would really like is to run the Sybase engine, and use 4D on the mac
as the front end.

I also know of someone here at Stanford who has started building a
front end to Sybase on the Next.  It lets you add tables and columns,
create default layouts, retrieve data, enter data, etc.
It is pretty nice, but has a small problem with memory management that
makes it crash once in a while.  He may have some time freed up soon
and be able to clean it up a little bit. I do not know how he feels
about giving it out, but if you send me a request, I will forward it.


Joe Liemandt
liemandt@lindy.stanford.edu
I bet the next NeXT is 88000 based.
            
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