ajayshah@alhena.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) (04/27/91)
WARNING: I HAVE NEVER USED C-TREE; ONLY READ A LOT ABOUT IT. Faircom has three serious products: C-Tree, R-Tree and D-Tree. All three are sold in C source (!!). This source is said to compile on over a hundred platforms, including Suns and PCs. Both R-Tree and D-Tree are built on top of C-Tree. Faircom also does SQL servers but here they have weird licensing hangups which put them on par with the competition. Besides, the servers only run on the PC... Faircom doesn't sell C source and has no plans of doing so. C-Tree C-Tree is the basic database access kernel. It is considered robust, fast and bug-free. As far as I can tell, it has no silly hard limits; i.e., it can do megabyte sized records, 32 bit addresable number of records, etc. It does variable-size records and B+ trees. R-Tree This is a report-generating script language. Faircom gives you a C-callable function which takes a script as an argument and returns a report. The script language is considered powerful and excellent for queries which are run on a regular basis. It is not a good option for one-time queries, though it may be convenient to write a awkish frontend which parses a user and generates R-Tree scripts. D-Tree This is a application generator -- things like paint data entry screens, menus, etc. Useful but nothing to write home about. Widely considered buggy in v1.0. Haven't heard feedback about more recent versions. As far as I know, Programmer's Shop has the best prices on these three. Faircom sells a bundle called Faircom Toolbox which is a combination of these three. Last I heard of, the price was $845. This is a license for one programmer, there are no royalties. There is a C-Tree mailing list on USENET. Contact tony%oha@CS.UAlberta.CA for info. -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Ajay Shah, (213)734-3930, ajayshah@usc.edu The more things change, the more they stay insane. _______________________________________________________________________________