rmc@spectrix.UUCP (Russell Crook) (12/04/87)
I have someone at my site installing INGRES from the std. DEC distribution tape under Ultrix. It is an unsupported product. There appears to be a problem with installation - certain modules involved with locking seem to be missing. If anyone out there has installed Ingres under Ultrix and has circumvented or fixed this problem (or is willing to help by answering (probably dumb) questions), please contact me via email for details (I do not know them). Thanks in advance ... Russell Crook (...!utzoo!spectrix!rmc)
davy@ea.ecn.purdue.edu (Dave Curry) (12/10/87)
A few months ago I posted two articles; one asking for info on ports of University INGRES to Suns or Goulds, and the other asking if there was interest in an INGRES mailing list. Well, the first question was answered with a few "don't, it's a mess" letters and one from someone at RTI (I forget who) who suggested that RTI has really good price breaks for universities. Although it's true that they do have good prices, we aren't looking to spend any money at all (typical univeristy attitude...). Supposedly the latest Sun User Group tape has a working INGRES on it, though. In response to the second question, I got exactly one interested response. Oh well. --Dave
operje@griffin.uvm.edu (Operator) (09/25/89)
I'm working for the EMBA computer facility at the University of Vermont. We have a BA (Business Administration) data base that is being accessed with a "C" program that someone wrote. Recently, the distributor of tapes for this data base changed it's format. I've got the responsability to bring the "C" program up to speed. I figure that using a data base management system is the best way to go. So I looked up Ingres and found the manual. It recomends that I go through the Ingres tutorial. I can't find it anywhere. Anybody know where I can find this, and/or a new version of Ingres? Jim Ertle operje@emily.uvm.edu
csosnu@uta.fi (Ossi Numminen) (02/26/90)
Dear comp.databasers,
We have been using Ingres 6.2. in VAX/VMS environment for some
time now. It seems to us that database procedures are not fully
matured so far.
We would like to hear any comments or opinions concerning the
use of database procedures in Ingress.
-Have you had any problems?
-Have you recognized any clear bugs? Unexpected behaviour?
-Anything else?
We'll appreciate any comments and opinions.
Thanks in advance,
Ossi Numminencapehart@nevada.edu (ANNE CAPEHART) (11/12/90)
Can anyone recommend a few good books for learning INGRES? I've done
extensive work with databases on pc's (e.g. dBase, Profile, Works) and
am quite comfortable with Unix. But I've never used INGRES and will be
starting a project with it next semester. I've been given free reign over
the reference manuals. But there must be a good book or two out on the
market.
--
Anne Racel Internet: capehart@nevada.edu
University of Nevada, Compuserve: 72105,1105
Las Vegas Bitnet: capehart@unsvax.bitnet
"Yes, it works well in practice, but will it work in theory?" Anon.srini@ultra.com (S. Srinivasan) (11/13/90)
In comp.databases you write:
> Can anyone recommend a few good books for learning INGRES? I've done
Two books, both written by C.J. Date:
1. Introduction to Database Systems, Vol. I. Computer Science Press.
The best book I have seen on Relational Databases.
After Ullman's book(with the DBA/Chef on the front cover),
I still had a lingering feeling that DBMS was dry as beef jerky.
Then David Maier's "Theory of Relational Databases" came along, and
I got religion. But it is slightly esoteric for the lay person.
And then I went through all of Date's book these last few months, and
it was like seeing things I had never seen before. I am in awe of the
man and no longer in awe of the subject! His focus is somewhat on
the peculiarities of DB2, but he does spend a few chapters on INGRES.
2. A Guide to Ingres
The name says it all. Not as inspiring as the first one, but it does
cover INGRES thoroughly - better than the manuals!
Hope you can find them, if you cant, then email me
and I can get you some more info.
S. Srinivasan
[srini@ultra.com]
Ultra Network Technologies
San Jose, California
"Home of the Gigabit Network"bishop@mhinfo.UUCP (Deborah Bishop) (02/18/91)
We are developing an inventory management system using Ultrix/SQL (aka Ingres) and ABF, and could use some help with the following: 1. Since only applications built by the DBA are shareable, we have all been signing on as the DBA to do our development. When we try to COMPILE and GO to test our work, Ingres compiles ALL modules under development - even though they do not reference each other. If one programmer's module fails, we cannot run the others. Obviously, there must be a smarter way to develop in a multi-programmer shop. Will the -u switch help? Will the modules still be shareable? 2. When we actually go to build an image (using ABFIMAGE), we consistently run into unresolved references. We resolve this by opening the 'offending' OSQ and rewriting it. (We change nothing in the file). Doing this a few times fixes the problem. Any ideas what might be causing this problem? 3. To perform a 'get next record' operation we use a form = select record where key > :key order by key. Now I know that using a singleton select in this way would cause most sql implementations to bomb, but it works. We are worried that we're employing a substandard technique, taking advantage of a hole(?) (albeit a convenient one) in Ingres, and wonder if anyone has a smarter (safer) approach. 4. We use the -s flag on our reports. This removes all messages except 'Ingres Report Writer...blah, blah'. Does anyone know how to get rid of this message? 5. The system we are rebuilding currently runs on a DG using INFOS files. We are considering using the Ingres Export product to read the INFOS files into a format that we can use to load into Ingres on Ultrix. Does anyone have any insight into this? Like, will it work? -- Deborah Bishop (uunet!mhinfo!bishop) Mile High Information Services Suite 3400 9101 E. Kenyon Denver CO 80237 303) 721-0851
chesky@leland.Stanford.EDU (Snehylata Gupta) (03/15/91)
In article <1698@formtek.UUCP> rak@formtek (Rich Koch) writes: > > We are looking for a database product that can allow us to >build user-friendly interfaces with the product's forms package on >VAX workstations running VMS, Sun SPARC workstations running UNIX >(Sun OS), and IBM RS6000 workstations running AIX. Performance and > From what I saw today on the net, I have been led to believe >that INGRES's stability on the DEC RISC ULTRIX is questionable and >Oracle is less than prompt with its upgrades. I need more info. > > Rich Koch INGRES haas stability problems even on the VMS platform. We have had a lot of problems with INGRES version 6 (6.2, 6.3) running on VMS version 5.x (5.1, 5.2, 5.3). I still prefer INGRES to ORACLE but it seems sometimes that INGRES was designed by a bunch of graduate students who did not really have much idea of a user environment. For example one consistent problem that we have had with INGRES is the handling of a bad database access typically : select * from x, y where x.a != y.b The INGRES developers probably assumed that such queries would not be submitted. However in a real life environment most programmers have never been exposed to the power (:-( ) of SQL. It is not easy for a PL1/COBOL/FORTRAN programmer to grasp the intricacies involved, so this happens much more often than one would assume. When tables x and y are large (50K or 100K or more) it can get very bad. I know I have been there (many many times). When you look at the engine you will see that this query is just hogging all the resourcess and not allocating any resources to other users. When you have 100+ users on the system and a developer launched such a query. You will start getting phone calls within 15-30 min. When you go and yell at the developer. Lets say he kills the job. So you expect that that would solve all your problems. But wait your problems have just begun. Because now INGRES has begun to cleanup after itself. So you sit there and watch (I have watched for upto 5-6 hours while this continues.) That is not all of it. Let us say that the concerned database resides on a certain disk which is also shared by some other application. All of a sudden this disk is now full and users are getting no response and 0 disk space available problem. Why? because INGRES needs the disk space for the temporary tables and since it is smart (?) once that disk is full it will just go over to the next disk. By this time your boss is standing over your shoulder as is the system manager and you are telling them that you have been trying to kill all the processes but they are not going away. So you have to shut INGRES down completely. Some databases (at least) will be corrupted. There have been cases when we had to reboot the machine (VAX 8800 - VMS) but noone could prove that it was INGRES's fault. The time out feature in VMS has problems in recognizing INGRES activity. However : ------- All the above problems have only when INGRES is misused. INGRES does not seem to give much problems if you know what you are doing. Maybe I have been overly harsh in my criticism of INGRES's problems but as a total system I prefer it to ORACLE and INFORMIX. I am using ORACLE currently and it is a more robust system than INGRES in the way it handles bad programmers but ORACLE version 6 is not as powerful as INGRES. If I had to choose between the 2 I would pick INGRES. But I would (sigh) still reserve the right to complain. Most of the discussion in here has focussed on INGRES and ORACLE. I have used INFORMIX a little bit. I was surprised at it's user friendliness speed and the power of it's 4GL. However I have not had enough experrience to make a detailed comment on it. /*Sanjay */ chesky@leland.stanford.edu
pavlov@canisius.UUCP (Greg Pavlov) (03/16/91)
In article <1991Mar14.182225.12723@leland.Stanford.EDU>, chesky@leland.Stanford.EDU (Snehylata Gupta) writes: > > INGRES haas stability problems even on the VMS platform..... For > example one consistent problem that we have had with INGRES is the > handling of a bad database access typically : > > [ a retrieval query producing a cartesian product ] > > The INGRES developers probably assumed that such queries would not be > submitted...... > When you look at the engine you will see that this query is just hogging > all the resourcess and not allocating any resources to other users. > > When you have 100+ users on the system and a developer launched such a > query. You will start getting phone calls within 15-30 min. When you go > and yell at the developer. Lets say he kills the job. So you expect that > that would solve all your problems. But wait your problems have just > begun. Because now INGRES has begun to cleanup after itself. So you sit > there and watch (I have watched for upto 5-6 hours while this > continues.) ..... > .....and you are telling them that you have been trying to kill all > the processes but they are not going away. So you have to shut INGRES > down completely. Some databases (at least) will be corrupted. > However : > ------- > All the above problems have only when INGRES is misused. INGRES does not > seem to give much problems if you know what you are doing. > From our own long, painful hegira thru version 6, I would say that you are describing things reasonably accurately but you are not inter- preting the symptoms quite correctly. First, the cartesian product you showed is NOT the cause of the problem in and of itself: actually, there were various queries and/or actions that would cause similar results, e.g., the backend would become "con- sumed" by a single process, sometimes an errant one, sometimes a legit- imate one. INGRES tech people described the mechanics of the bug to us and eventually provided a patch that has pretty much cleared it up on our platform (DEC RISC). Likewise, the cleanup operation you describe was also more generic than you describe (on our version, anyway); this also seems to have been pretty well cleaned up by now. Acording to INGRES tech support, earlier version 6 releases tended to inappropriately log certain classes of transactions, such as initial table creates/loads and secondary index generation. In their words, this "code was removed" from those places where it shouldn't have been. Yah, things are getting better. At the moment, only four more serious bugs to go .... (anybody want to give INGRES a hand with some stable btree algorithms ???). > Maybe I have been overly harsh in my criticism of INGRES's problems but > as a total system I prefer it to ORACLE and INFORMIX. - that was my attitude for a long time. But it's pretty well gone at this point. greg pavlov, fstrf, amherst, ny pavlov@stewart.fstrf.org
bmorrell@ms.uky.edu (Bill Morrell) (04/22/91)
Can anyone tell me if there is a version of Ingres available for the IBM PC running MS-DOS? If so, what is the price? Thanks, Bill
sanjay@starnet.uucp (Sanjay Mazumdar) (04/24/91)
In article <1991Apr22.153818.12139@ms.uky.edu> bmorrell@ms.uky.edu (Bill Morrell) writes: >Can anyone tell me if there is a version of Ingres available for the >IBM PC running MS-DOS? >If so, what is the price? > >Thanks, >Bill The product is called INGRES PC and it is expensive. Last I heard it was around 1499 or so. Sanjay
mcintoshc@ctl.co.nz (04/26/91)
In article <1991Apr22.153818.12139@ms.uky.edu>, bmorrell@ms.uky.edu (Bill Morrell) writes: > Can anyone tell me if there is a version of Ingres available for the > IBM PC running MS-DOS? > If so, what is the price? > > Thanks, > Bill X-News: ctl.co.nz rec.aviation:7302 Yes we do ... It is only version 5 :-( It is memory hungry (but what isn't) :-( It is only single user :-( It will work on SOME LAN's but not multi user :-( It has a nice LOTUS 1-2-3 menu style option :-) (why can't the other versions?) You can have simple 4GL/ABF or embedded SQL/C compiler versions If you only want the front end (client) this is available in version 6 :-) Cost in New Zealand converted to sterling is about 1,200pounds We, I guess, are about the most experienced developers of PC INGRES in New Zealand - we have found one or two problems, especially with memory, but I expect any day now the arrival of a new release to cure my woes !! On the whole a good stable product, just waiting for full version 6 back-end!! If you want any further details, please e-mail me. regards, Colin ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- From : Colin McIntosh, Project Manager # .=====. ======== Computertime Ltd, P.O. Box 6243 # / / / / Wellington, New Zealand # / / / Phone: (04) 852 195 # / / / Fax : (04) 828 288 # / / / / Internet: MCINTOSHC@NZFC.CO.NZ # ====== / ====== -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
carrato@mhinfo.UUCP (Tony Carrato) (05/14/91)
Has anyone every tried using either Ingres or another SQL database to store and retrieve tables on write-once optical media? To refine that a bit further, has anyone ever done that on a Unix platform? Tony Carrato Mile-High Information Services, Inc.
rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) (05/18/91)
Forgive the following naive questions, I haven't had to deal with commercial database packages before. We are about to buy Ingres and were shocked to find out that a) update pricing does not include any technical support (that's another $6K), b) there is no "warranty"-type period when you can call in for free with technical questions, and c) if you don't buy the support to begin with, you have to pay for missed years later on. Now, I've heard of things like c) before, but it always related to having missed updates. Since update support is separate here, you could be at the latest release, have never made a single phone call to take the time of their tech support people, and yet if you want to start asking questions a couple of years later, you'd have to fork over $18K to get that third year support. We told Ingres that this was surprising, and they said that it's standard in the database world (said it rather patronizingly, too). Is this really true? The price was also pretty shocking to us despite the 80% educational discount we get (does anyone actually pay $50K for the base system on a Sun 4-class computer?). Are all of the major database packages in the same ballpark? Oracle, Sybase, etc.? And do they all have what amounts to (for us, at least) 60% of the purchase cost for support every year? Since another of our sites has had Ingres for a couple of years, it's the package we probably have to get, and we can probably get by without the support. But I'd love to know if this is really standard in the industry. -- Ruth Milner Systems Manager NRAO/VLA Socorro NM Computing Division Head rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu
sanjay@starnet.uucp (Sanjay Mazumdar) (05/20/91)
In article <1991May17.231043.21429@nmt.edu> rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) writes: >Forgive the following naive questions, I haven't had to deal with commercial >database packages before. > >We are about to buy Ingres and were shocked to find out that a) update pricing >does not include any technical support (that's another $6K), b) there is >no "warranty"-type period when you can call in for free with technical Not only that. But you are limited to 2 people on site who can call up tech support. At least that ws the way it was until the end of last year. We had one hell of a problem trying to get calls into tech support. I know for certain that on Oracle anyone on site can call tech suport. But that was not the way INGRES worked. Also you do need tech support especially if you have large/complex (:-)? ) databases on the same server. Since you never know when the server will crash and believe me you will crash the server. >Ruth Milner >Systems Manager NRAO/VLA Socorro NM >Computing Division Head rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu
rcunning@convex.com (Randy Cunningham) (05/21/91)
In <1991May17.231043.21429@nmt.edu> rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner) writes: >We are about to buy Ingres and were shocked to find out that a) update pricing >does not include any technical support (that's another $6K), b) there is >no "warranty"-type period when you can call in for free with technical >questions, and c) if you don't buy the support to begin with, you have to >pay for missed years later on. Now, I've heard of things like c) before, but >it always related to having missed updates. Since update support is separate >here, you could be at the latest release, have never made a single phone call >to take the time of their tech support people, and yet if you want to start >asking questions a couple of years later, you'd have to fork over $18K to get >that third year support. We told Ingres that this was surprising, and they >said that it's standard in the database world (said it rather patronizingly, >too). All of these issues revolve around the fact that technical support is the costliest thing that a software company sells... there's a person there who answers your questions, the person draws a salary, and the difference between what you pay the company and they pay their employee (the "margin") is, often, surprisingly thin over time. The separate update and technical support pricing is a "feature;" if you DON'T need tech support, they're giving you a break... not all software companies do this. The warranty is something that they SHOULD do, if they have confidence in their own products. Of course, there is a cost, and if they DO have to provide a lot of "warranty" technical support, it's just going to end up in the initial license pricing. Issue (c) is just a hard reality that the software companies "have" to do to avoid being manipulated... if I could pay after a quiet period, it would be analogous to me beginning to pay premiums to my insurance company AFTER totaling my car. It is probably possible to secure tech support on a time and materials basis (which is what you're effectively proposing), but the cost to you are likely to be far higher than if you sign up for tech support, which evenly spreads the costs among all consumers. Typical tech support costs are between 15-20% of the product base price. Your costs are higher because your base price is so advantageous with the educational discount. Finally, people are willing to pay between nothing and a million bucks or more for DBMS software... some who pay nothing are paying too much, and some who pay a million get paid back over and over again. It all depends on what the DBMS is used for, how critical it is, what the alternatives are, etc. -- Randy Cunningham Product Marketing Manager CONVEX Computer Corporation Voice: (214) 497-4898 3000 Waterview Parkway Fax: (214) 497-4848 Richardson, TX 75080 Internet: rcunning@convex.com