gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (08/16/85)
I would like to hear from someone who is using Unity (from the AT&T System ToolChest). Is Unity suitable for real work or is it just a toy?
dsp@ptsfa.UUCP (David St. Pierre) (08/25/85)
I'm not sure I'd classify it as either a toy or a RDBMS
(where R stands for Real). Rather it's another tool which
can do reasonable work with minimum effort on files which
have a known number of fields.
The "data base" is a standard ASCII file, indices can be built
if desired. Joins, selections, projections are supported.
The DDL is a simple ASCII file in either the current directory
or the directory where the "data base" is stored - thereby
allowing a regular UNIX user access to files such as /etc/passwd
where they do not normally have write permission into /etc.
(Maybe you want to join the passwd file to something else)
We've found it useful for subsetting password-type files.
We also wanted to build/maintain some automatic cross-referencing
of IMS data, and the easiest way still (after 2 years no less)
seems to be to dump the data into UNIX and throw a dozen or so
tools at it. UNITY is the central tool in this instance.
UNITY also provides for field validation - after the fact. This has
proven useful because I often want to find out "what records aren't ...".
Again, an ASCII file defines the validation syntax.
Much of what UNITY does could be handled with awk/cut/sed/bs.
Then again, I suppose one could do the whole thing in C.
UNITY doesn't win any speed records, but neither does awk for that matter.
It *IS* moderately easy to master and use - and is appropriate when you
want to work on files which for one reason or another cannot permanently
be placed into one of the commercial DBMS'.
--
David St. Pierre {ihnp4,dual,qantel}!ptsfa!dspmurray@hcradm.UUCP (Murray Maloney) (08/27/85)
>> From: gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) >> Subject: Unity >> Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.746 >> Posted: Fri Aug 16 06:48:32 1985 >> Organization: Ballistic Research Lab > > I would like to hear from someone who is using Unity (from the > AT&T System ToolChest). Is Unity suitable for real work or is it > just a toy? Apparently the author is referring to UNIFY from the UNIFY Corporation. UNITY is a product of Human Computing Resources Corporation. It is HCR's implementation of the UNIX operating system for DEC equipment. VAX UNITY under VMS is a version of UNIX System V which runs at the user level of VMS. UNITY adds on to VMS, providing true UNIX functionality, while VMS maintains complete control of the machine. Running under VMS, UNITY provides both popular environments for programmers. It requires no changes to the VMS operating system. PDP-11 UNITY is fully compatible with UNIX Version 7, and includes a wide array of UNIX System III and 4.1 BSD UNIX commands. HCR has added its own special enhancements on top of all of this. UNITY is definitely not a toy !!! UNITY is a trademark of Human Computing Resources Corporation. VAX, VMS, and PDP-11 are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. UNIX is trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories. UNIFY is a trademark of the UNIFY Corporation.